In 2017, the CIO, or International Olympic Committee, unanimously voted to hold the 2024 Games in Paris. The agency I was working for at the time was asked to create a campaign that would rekindle public interest in the games. People get bored easily, even with outstanding achievements. Especially with outstanding achievements.
I’d been working for a long time in tandem with my colleague, Victoria [BIIIP]. We’d done some killer projects together, but nothing of this magnitude. She came up with the idea first. And like all her ideas, I immediately thought it was brilliant. We just never imagined it could end like this…
I was at home watching TV one evening when I received the call from Victoria. She had one of those voices that always sounds winded, like women who are always rushing to get their kids to school (if they’d take time to have kids at all). Those women who run to get to work, who run around the stores, who run around bar hopping and chasing down men. It’s a constant race against the clock for them. And when there’s time to spare, they’re still running. Everything’s a big rush. When Victoria called me that night, there was no “Good evening,” or “How are you?” Nope. She got straight to the point.
The idea was this: randomly choose a male or female civilian to participate in the Olympic events. This person would compete alongside the athletes in every discipline, and their mediocrity and incapacity to perform would serve as a reference point for other civilians, thus allowing the athletes to regain the admiration of the public.
I thought the idea was wonderful. It was newsworthy. It was fun. It was lively, and could potentially go viral. For the CSR bullshit, we could even say it was educational. It was perfect. Now all we needed was a name for it.
And it came to me: “Olympic Man,” I said.
As soon as we had the IOC’s approval, we set off on a very long road to make it all possible, and most importantly, legal. It took us two years. Then, Covid happened. So in 2022, everything was set to go for the Olympic Man Campaign. All we needed now was our Olympic Man.
We’d designed an algorithm to target our ideal candidate. We cross-referenced millions of people according to their online activity, social networks and Internet history — a kind of robot portrait. We didn’t want an influencer. We didn’t want a guy who would whore himself out to the media, using the buzz to make his subscriber list explode. We simply wanted an average Joe. But of course, that wasn’t realistic. We would have to make one, but we needed a good springboard. To keep the feminists at bay, we elected for a man, realizing it would look good to show a guy losing against women in sporting events. The algorithm had done a pretty good job and provided a few names. We eliminated the guys that were too handsome — less people would be able to relate to him. We also nixed a gay guy’s profile. The parliamentary elections had just ended, and things were still tense, so we eliminated anyone the least bit political. And then, we found him…
He simply said, “Hello?”
And we knew. We liked him immediately. When we explained our idea to him, using choice words so as not to offend him in any way, he told us he wasn’t interested. But he didn’t hang up. All he would have had to do was hang up, but that wouldn’t have painted the whole picture. It was obvious to me why he remained on the line. It was for Victoria. He was an ordinary guy who clearly understood that the woman speaking to him over the phone must be as beautiful as her voice suggested. He knew that any woman on the street (or anywhere else) would never give him a second glance. Accepting this offer would be his only chance to get close to her, to cross paths with her. Victoria was also aware of this, and she played along. It was the worst thing we could have done to him. Now I wish we had gone with any of the other guys, one of the other idiots dreaming of stardom. But no — he had been chosen. We had chosen him. He agreed to meet, so we invited him to the agency.
He told us that he’d almost canceled our meeting. But out of a sense of duty, he decided to come, likening it to being called for jury duty. That made me grin. Good people always make me a little nervous. After signing the contract, he asked if we had anything planned for the Paralypics. “Who cares,” Victoria said. “Nobody watches them.” As we steered him out of our offices, the entire agency was there. We’d rehearsed. Everyone started applauding, and I noticed our guy suddenly stood a little bit taller. A little straighter. Perhaps for the first time, he was conscious of his own image. We should have sensed by now that we’d made a mistake. But it was too late now.
We ordered a private chauffeur with a black Tesla to drive him to photo shoots, interviews and press conferences. At that point in time, the French people were highly critical of the Games due to the transport and traffic issues, safety concerns, the ridiculous notion of swimming events taking place in the Seine, and so on. But our man quickly became invincible. People loved him. His disarmingly down-to-earth statements were shared on Twitter (sorry, I meant X). There were memes of him on social media and Instagram accounts dedicated to him. His face was everywhere, even if his name was nowhere to be found. Our contract stated that no one was allowed to refer to him by any other name than “Olympic Man.” We thought his presence would improve the athletes’ image, but the public had chosen him as their clear favorite, their mascot, their banner of mediocrity under which they could unite and see themselves. A symbol of failure. It wasn’t what we’d had in mind. But all that mattered were the ratings, views, and followers. So for us, it was mission accomplished. One day, we received a call from Thomas Joly, director of the opening ceremony, asking us to integrate Olympic Man into the Olympic finale. So we did. We’d created a kind of myth, a hymn à l’amour of being alive. A love of our own limitations. Our inadequacy. Our mortality.
He and Victoria had a real thing going. She went everywhere with him, orchestrating all his communications, all his speeches, his image, his movements. She was always by his side, like a coach without a stopwatch. He was her unaccomplished champion. A God without thunder or halo, except for the ones forming around his armpits. A common mortal, like you or me. And then, it happened.
4
The first event: the 100 meter race. It was the most popular event, especially that year. He’d obviously received no training or been on a special diet. He was just there, all 5 feet 8 inches and 145 pounds of him. His starting block had been adjusted for him. His jersey had no sponsor logo on it, merely the colors of the five olympic rings and his name: “Olympic Man.” He was surrounded by the other athletes. Men from all over the world of all different skin colors, the true athletes, doing their stretches and warm-ups. Victoria and I were sitting on the benches, and I noticed him looking over at her, but she was on the phone. Victoria had already started getting calls from other sports federations to direct similar projects. She was becoming a star, just like our Man. The stands were packed. TV ratings were through the roof. Youtube, TikTok, Insta, everything was bursting with content about the Olympics, all thanks to us. Thanks to Victoria. I think if she’d simply looked over at our guy, things may have gone differently. But it was at that very moment that it seemed to hit him. All of it. People’s scorn. The great farce. The joke of which he was serving as the punchline. And he began to spiral.
The athletes got into position. He followed suit. Nobody had explained things to him, and you could tell he’d never learned how to position himself on a starting block before. So he copied the others: one knee on the block, legs bent. He placed his fingers on the non-slip tartan behind the white line. He looked up toward Victoria, who still didn’t look back at him. If we’d done our job right, we’d have given him a final debrief and told him to act natural. His job was to be as bad at this as any other person watching him on TV or the Internet would be. He was expected to just be human. But I guess he was tired of being human.
The Starter gave his first order: “On your marks” The others got into starting position. So did he. “Get set,” the Starter shouted. The runners shifted their weight into their arms, their leading legs at a 90° angle, trail legs at a 120° angle. Like robots. Our Man was already struggling, but was doing his best. The Starter raised his arm in the air, brandishing a firing pistol.
It was then that I spotted the problem. I saw the fear in our Man’s eyes. He was afraid. He was scared of the gunshots, scared of what would happen. Afraid of running, afraid of the people, afraid of success, afraid of failure. His whole body tensed up. I could tell he just wanted to escape and wished he’d never picked up the phone, that he’d never accepted our offer. He just wanted to go home, to run away at full speed.
He burst past the starting blocks. Something was happening; he was an antelope sprinting alongside lions. He didn’t want to overtake them, but to distance himself from them. Something was happening; with each movement, his stride lengthened, his breath snapping like a whip. He was running, fleeing. Fleeing the gaze of those who’d never given him the time of day. Fleeing the cries of those shouting out a name that wasn’t his own. Fleeing the opponents that refused to acknowledge his existence. And nothing was stopping him: he was a lightning bolt of the ages, a naked body, invisible, elusive, defying time and space. One hundred meters. One hundred meters to reach deep into the soul of a bipedal animal and make a God who flies faster than the speed of light emerge. Nine seconds. Nine seconds to live harder and stronger than the years that had separated him from his anonymous birth to this goddamn immortal moment, when he would cross the finish line…in first place. First. Him. Olympic Man.
The world went berserk. Everyone knew they’d just witnessed a miracle. I was shocked, like everyone else. Victoria was on her feet, leaving the benches. Her cell phone had fallen out of her hand. And she looked at our Man, for real, perhaps for the first time. All I could think of in that moment was that we’d created a legend. And then, then, the crowd began to panic. Olympic Man’s body was trembling, his eyes glazed over. He collapsed onto his knees before falling, stiff as a board, immobile. He’d never move again.
The doctors said his heart had exploded. A lawsuit ensued. But we’d spent years steeling ourselves, so we won it. After what had happened, Victoria up and quit the agency. During the trials, she remained silent. She had changed; she was like a ghost. After the verdict, I didn’t hear from her for a long time. But she recently got in touch with me. She sounded good. She called to ask if I wanted to work with her on the upcoming American elections.
