In exactly twelve months, the Paris Olympics and Paralympics will be finishing. Between now and 8 September 2024, France will enjoy an exceptional sporting year. For starters, the 2023 Rugby World Cup (RWC) began last Friday, a taster of welcoming the world to France.

These world sporting events start and finish in Paris at Le Stade de France. Between these bookends, however, the staging of the events will have major points of difference in pace and geography. Les JO are obviously the main course of the sporting feast but the games are packed into 15 frantic days. The world cup has a slower rhythm and professional club rugby in France is even pausing itself to savour the 51 days of RWC. La coupe du monde occupies a genuinely national stage – with nine host cities across the country – whereas over 85% of les JO will be happening in the Paris region.

There is rising excitement in the air. Friday’s blockbuster first match saw the attractive and successful host team play the mythical New Zealand All Blacks. Pre-match, la Marseillaise met the famous Haka in a stadium which, after dark, looked like a spaceship illuminated in bleu, blanc, rouge. Even the weather is playing ball and the warm summer is in a period of extra time. On balmy nights and with many fans visiting from les pays anglo-saxons, more beer is anticipated to be drunk in the next seven weeks than in the whole of a normal year. The owner of La Belle Ferronnière, my favourite brasserie just off the Champs Elysées, was optimistic about receiving thirsty “rugbymen” celebrating the rugby ritual of “le troisième mi-temps.”