The Olympics needed a reset. Merci to Paris for providing it.

PARIS – The Olympic cauldron here was unlike any other, a hot-air balloon that rose nightly above Jardin des Tuileries. That garden, the largest in this gorgeous city, is bordered by the Louvre on one side, the Seine on another, the Rue de Rivoli to the north, and is a short walk to the Champs-Élysées. What a picture. What a place.

The Olympics needed a reset. Paris provided it. In competition, sure, but the competition always has a way of burying whatever controversy du jour precedes it, regardless of where the Games are held or how the Chablis-sipping bureaucrats from the International Olympic Committee profit from it all.

Leon Marchand and Stephen Curry. Simone Biles and Summer McIntosh. Gabby Thomas and Katie Ledecky. Stars, all.

But the showstopping star here was the city of Paris, a stage without peer. It would be one thing to have a beach volleyball court that sits in the shadow of an iconic monument, another to stage fencing in a breathtaking palace, yet another to put the equestrian competition in the gardens of a 17th century chateau. Paris did them all, and more.

Los Angeles hosts the next Summer Olympics. As a backdrop and by comparison, it won’t be the same.

“If L.A. would like to copy the Eiffel Tower, it would be a recipe for disaster,” said IOC President Thomas Bach, whose term ends before the next Games begin. “Each Olympic Games has to be authentic, has to be creative and has to show the culture of the host country, the host city and to be open to share this with the world.”

Paris did exactly that. Before we look ahead, though, it’s imperative to look back.

Nothing against Tokyo or Beijing, the hosts of the most recent Summer and Winter Games, respectively, but those Olympics were terrible. Not athletically. But viscerally and emotionally and aesthetically.

The coronavirus pandemic dictated first that the Tokyo Summer Games would be delayed by a year, then staged in 2021 with no fans. The venues were Hollywood sets, nothing more. Any energy had to be provided by the athletes. That just can’t fill a stadium.

“I’m not gonna lie,” Megan Rapinoe, then a star of the U.S. women’s soccer team, said back then. “That part sucks.”

Beijing and its outskirts for the 2022 Winter Games were almost worse, not only because the pandemic lingered and fans were prohibited again, but because life in the Olympic bubble – zero interaction with outsiders, and swabs jabbed down throats on a daily basis – carried with it the heavy overtones of a controlling Chinese government. The restrictions were based on medicine and science, sure. But it was hard to escape a draconian feel.

Go back even further, back when there were fans. PyeongChang, South Korea in the winter of 2018 felt far-flung and disjointed. Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 2016 was grotesque in its displacement of impoverished people and the construction of now-abandoned venues. Sochi, Russia, in the winter of 2014 was a vanity project for an autocrat.

So the contrast in Paris was stark. The venues were full. They often danced and swayed and pulsed. Certainly, not all the French people supported this endeavor. Indeed, the annual summer emptying of Paris by Parisians began early this year.

But spend a few minutes with the home crowd packed into, say, La Defense Arena when Marchand won one of his four swimming golds. Now listen to every member of that crowd belt out “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem, and tell the hairs on your arm not to stand up. Can’t do it.

The Games even provided an unexpected bracket to the covid era. When American sprinter Noah Lyles – already the gold medalist in the 100 meters – fell to bronze in his better event, the 200, it presented for a second as merely an athletic upset. When Lyles lay on the track, chest heaving, and was taken off in a wheelchair, it switched quickly to a medical situation.

In reality, Lyles had covid. He competed with it. He was hampered. He won bronze anyway. He pronounced himself proud to have fought through. His competitors were decidedly uninterested.

“I don’t care,” said American Kenny Bednarek, the silver medalist. “I mean, if I get sick or whatever, like, I’ll be fine.”

Feels like a covid benchmark. It’s still here. But we’re living with it.

No Olympics is without controversy, so Paris wasn’t immune. The Games began with the participation of 11 Chinese swimmers who were among 23 who tested positive for a banned substance before the Tokyo Games. It included swipes from the IOC at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for criticizing its global counterpart, the World Anti-Doping Agency, as well as a threat – idle as it is – to withhold the just-awarded 2034 Winter Olympics from Salt Lake City if USADA doesn’t, essentially, shut up.

The strife that loomed the largest was the ridiculous accusations by officials from the International Boxing Association – which the IOC has prevented from overseeing its sport here – that female boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu Ting of Taiwan had failed gender tests. Both won gold. They should be proud. At least the IOC supported them throughout.

There were others. The Seine was occasionally too dirty to swim in. Sunday brought a callback of the bronze medal won by American gymnast Jordan Chiles following a court ruling on a judging discrepancy. A Dutch beach volleyball player who was a convicted child rapist was allowed to compete. Some 45,000 local and national police patrolled the streets.

Those were substantive issues, all of them. Yet they didn’t seem to derail the Games. Credit Paris – the city and its people – for that.

Staging the Olympics is fraught. The Games, for most, are a television program that largely revolves around what their American broadcast partner, NBC, needs and wants. That can be a direct contrast to the needs and wants of the citizens of the city and country that hosts them. The IOC doesn’t care.

But for future Olympics, there is now a modern model, and a renewed spirit, that were embodied here. After the drudgery that dates back more a decade, both are welcome.

The competition almost always elevates the Olympics beyond whatever issues – self-inflicted or otherwise – threaten to hamper them. What played out in Paris were parallel tracks: athletes who deserve to be lifted up and admired, and a city that inherently elevates and inspires. We may not see such a perfect marriage again.