PARIS (AP) — In French, there are no goodbyes.
Instead, Olympic crowds from Paris to the surfing venue in Tahiti were saying “au revoir” — see you again — as the 2024 Games drew to a close Sunday.
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PARIS (AP) — In French, there are no goodbyes.
Japan's Ami Yuasa, known as B-Girl Ami, and Netherland's India Sardjoe, known as B-Girl India, compete during the B-Girls semifinal at the breaking competition at La Concorde Urban Park at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin)
Tatiana Weston-Webb, of Brazil, surfs during the gold medal match of the surfing competition at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, in Teahupo'o, Tahiti. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Czech Republic's Jiri Beran, left, competes with France's Yannik Borel in the men's team epee bronze final match during the 2024 Summer Olympics at the Grand Palais, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
France's Teddy Riner celebrates after defeating Japan's Tatsuru Saito during men's +90 kg of the mixed team final match in the team judo competition, at Champ-de-Mars Arena, during the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Algeria's Imane Khelif, left, fights China's Yang Liu in their women's 66 kg final boxing match at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
A visitor using an umbrella for shade, tours the Chateau de Versailles, whose grounds are the site of the equestrian events during the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Canada's Naïma Moreira-Laliberté, riding Statesman, during the Equestrian Dressage competition, at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)
Switzerland's Nina Brunner serves during the women's semi-final beach volleyball match between Switzerland and Canada at Eiffel Tower Stadium at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)
Armand Duplantis, of Sweden, celebrates after setting a new world record in the men's pole vault final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, in Saint-Denis, France. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Simone Biles, of the United States, performs on the uneven bars during the women's artistic gymnastics all-around finals in Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Spectators wait for the start of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Friday, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
The Olympic torch travels by boat as ceremonial smoke in the colors of the France flag appear over the Seine River Paris, France, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
Flashes of lights illuminate the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
After the 100-year wait since Paris' last Games, no one can say when France's capital and the Olympics will next embrace. But this much is certain: They're both emerging changed — in some ways for the better — from their summer romance.
Paris' third Games — it also hosted in 1900 — have been filled with passion. French fans surprised even themselves with their enthusiasm for two and a half weeks of sports, plunging into the party like Léon Marchand parting the waters for his four swimming golds.
Marchand, in particular, stopped time with his feats — forcing pauses in play at other Olympic venues because spectators cheered so intensely when France's new darling won again and again. Other French medal winners like judo icon Teddy Riner and mountain biker Pauline Ferrand-Prevot also whipped up hometown joy.
Initial grumbling about barricades and other intense security measures that disrupted locals' lives — not to mention arson attacks on France's high-speed rail network — gave way to choruses of “Allez les bleus!" or “France, let's go!”
There were uplifting stories galore for non-French fans, too. Quite literally in the case of Armand Duplantis, the Swedish pole vaulter who broke his own world record in winning Olympic gold.
Simone Biles shone, again. Having set the brave example of prioritizing mental health over competition at the 2021 Tokyo Games, she came back to win three gymnastics golds and a silver.
The Eiffel Tower peering over beach volleyball made that arena Ze Place To Be. Celine Dion's musical comeback at the Olympic opening, belting out Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour” (“Hymn to Love”) from the tower's first floor, was high in emotion.
Rain drenched VIPs and fans alike but didn't dampen the wacky and wonderful opening ceremony. Its displays of LGBTQ+ pride and French humor were too much for some: Donald Trump and French bishops were among those who took offense.
As well as many highlight-reel moments, the Games also experienced lows. The ugliest were torrents of online vitriol targeting female boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting as well as the opening ceremony's creative teams.
Still, like all good romances, the Paris-Olympics affair left fans yearning for more. That couldn't be said of all Games of late.
China — as host of the Summer Games in 2008 and Winter Games in 2022 — faced accusations of human rights abuses. There was Russia's doping cover-up at its Sochi Winter Games in 2014, quickly followed by the beginnings of its land grabs in Ukraine. All left stains on the Olympic brand.
So, too, did the wastefulness and corruption of the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro that made authorities in Paris determined to do things differently.
“Breaking the norms" became the unofficial motto of Paris Olympic organizers, who worked to slash the Games' carbon emissions and revamp the Olympic model to make it less anachronistic.
The results were evident. The Paris Games weren't perfect — can flying thousands of athletes across the world ever be with the climate in crisis? But the French capital provided new examples of how the Olympics can be improved.
Take the Olympic cauldron, for example: Paris' use of electricity and LED spotlights to make it seem that its cauldron was ablaze puts pressure on Los Angeles, the next host city, and Brisbane, Australia, in 2032 to not go back to burning tons of fossil fuels.
Also gone? Expensive new venues that don't get used much, or at all, once the Olympics have left town. Paris instead widely used existing or temporary arenas.
Marchand and other swimmers raced in a came-as-a-kit pool that will be dismantled and rebuilt in a Paris-area town where kids can't wait to splash around in it. Breaking (another innovation) and other urban sports played out on Concorde Plaza, where French revolutionaries removed King Louis XVI’s head.
When the lawns have grown back, there will mostly be only memories of other temporary arenas where archery, equestrian events and other sports looked as glamorous as Paris catwalk shows, set against iconic backdrops.
The Eiffel Tower, Versailles Palace, the domed Grand Palais (turned into a breathtaking arena for fencing and taekwondo) and other monuments became Olympic stars in their own right. The use of Paris' cityscape showed that the Olympics can — and should — adapt to their hosts, not the other way around.
The sole purpose-built signature sports venue was the new aquatics center in Seine Saint-Denis, where China won all eight diving golds, an unprecedented sweep.
The northern suburb of Paris is mainland France's poorest region and had such a shortage of pools that many of its kids can't swim. Regional leader Stéphane Troussel told The Associated Press that thanks to Games-related refurbishments and newly built swim centers that teams used for Olympic training, much of Seine Saint-Denis has now largely caught up — in pools at least — with better-off parts of France.
But the city's ambitions flirted at times with an excess of zeal.
Making triathletes and marathon swimmers do something that many Parisians recoil at themselves — plunge into the murky Seine River— proved problematic. Its waters were repeatedly deemed too dirty for training swims and forced a postponement of the men's triathlon — moved to the same day as the women's race, near the majestic Pont Alexandre III.
The mayor of Paris, who took a pre-Games dip in the Seine to demonstrate that its long-toxic waters are now swimmable, says 1.4 billion euros ($1.53 billion) plowed into a cleanup of the river is one of the Games' most transformative legacies. Still, the water quality concerns raised questions about whether many Parisians will dive in when City Hall plans to open the Seine for public swimming next summer.
Massive security required to safeguard the opening ceremony along the river — in a city hit repeatedly by extremist attacks in 2015 — proved financially painful for nearby businesses that were sealed inside the security cordon and lost customers.
French authorities also made unprecedentedly broad use of discretionary powers under an anti-terror law to keep hundreds of people, often minorities, they deemed to be potentially dangerous away from the biggest event modern France has ever organized. The use of AI-assisted surveillance also fueled critics' complaints that the Games are leaving an unwanted legacy of police repression.
Inside the high-security bubble of the athletes' village, some complained about the eco-friendly cardboard beds, rooms that weren’t air-conditioned and shortages of some foods — byproducts of Paris' drive for sustainability and waste reduction. Squaring the circle of how the Olympics can be viable in a warming world is going to be an ever-increasing challenge for hosts.
Still, the joyful crowds showed that the popular verdict was more positive than negative. The organizers' slogan was "Games Wide Open.” Seeing such happiness on streets that felt so unsafe when al-Qaida and Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers sowed terror in 2015 seemed to complete Paris' long recovery.
After the Paralympics from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8, normal life will resume. But the Games will keep ringing in Paris.
A victory bell in the Olympic stadium that winning athletes rang in celebration will get a new home — a restored Notre Dame. The cathedral's planned reopening in December, following more than five years of rebuilding after its 2019 fire, is the next big milestone on Paris' horizon.
The cathedral’s rector, Rev. Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, said the bell will hang in the roof above the altar and be rung whenever Mass is celebrated.
The chimes will serve as lasting reminders of the Games' “extraordinary atmosphere” and Olympic-inspired “unity of the French people that was very beautiful,” he said.
“This bell will be the sign of how these Games have left an imprint on France," Dumas said. “That really makes me happy.”
Paris-based correspondent John Leicester has reported for AP from 10 Summer and Winter Olympics.
AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
People watch the cauldron rise at sunset by the Olympic rings during the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Japan's Ami Yuasa, known as B-Girl Ami, and Netherland's India Sardjoe, known as B-Girl India, compete during the B-Girls semifinal at the breaking competition at La Concorde Urban Park at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin)
Tatiana Weston-Webb, of Brazil, surfs during the gold medal match of the surfing competition at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, in Teahupo'o, Tahiti. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Czech Republic's Jiri Beran, left, competes with France's Yannik Borel in the men's team epee bronze final match during the 2024 Summer Olympics at the Grand Palais, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
France's Teddy Riner celebrates after defeating Japan's Tatsuru Saito during men's +90 kg of the mixed team final match in the team judo competition, at Champ-de-Mars Arena, during the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Algeria's Imane Khelif, left, fights China's Yang Liu in their women's 66 kg final boxing match at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
A visitor using an umbrella for shade, tours the Chateau de Versailles, whose grounds are the site of the equestrian events during the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Canada's Naïma Moreira-Laliberté, riding Statesman, during the Equestrian Dressage competition, at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Versailles, France. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)
Switzerland's Nina Brunner serves during the women's semi-final beach volleyball match between Switzerland and Canada at Eiffel Tower Stadium at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)
Armand Duplantis, of Sweden, celebrates after setting a new world record in the men's pole vault final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, in Saint-Denis, France. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Simone Biles, of the United States, performs on the uneven bars during the women's artistic gymnastics all-around finals in Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Spectators wait for the start of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Friday, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
The Olympic torch travels by boat as ceremonial smoke in the colors of the France flag appear over the Seine River Paris, France, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
Flashes of lights illuminate the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) — Sunday underscored how much of a week-to-week league the NFL can be with several underdogs pulling off upsets.
None was larger than the Raiders, 8 1/2-point underdogs, rallying from 10 points down in the fourth quarter to defeat the Ravens 26-23.
And now the 0-2 Carolina Panthers, who are making a quarterback change, come to town. This time, Las Vegas (1-1) is a 5 1/2-point favorite, according to BetMGM Sportsbook, and the onus is on the Raiders to not overlook a desperate opponent in a potential trap game.
If coach Antonio Pierce's comments Monday were any indication, that shouldn't be a problem.
“We've got a lot of things that we need to correct,” he said. “It was a win yesterday, but there were a lot of things in that first quarter that were ugly, in that first half that were ugly and in that third quarter that were ugly. We're not worried about the Panthers. We've got to fix the Raiders.”
Pierce is right. It was an impressive fourth quarter, but he knows the Raiders can't rely on such rallies to overcome a number of deficiencies that include a running game that still hasn't gotten started and a conversative offensive game plan that finally opened up in the fourth.
Given the Raiders' talent at the skill positions, opening with a more wide-open game plan should be easier to correct. Whether they have what they need in the running game is uncertain.
But if both areas don't get fixed, what the Raiders accomplished Sunday likely is not sustainable.
“Fourth quarter," Pierce said, "is what it needs to look like for all four quarters."
The Raiders haven't had a no-doubt-about-it successful first-round pick since taking running back Josh Jacobs in 2019. It looks as if tight end Brock Bowers has broken that skid.
He followed his six-catch, 58-yard debut against the Chargers by hauling in nine passes for 98 yards at Baltimore. No rookie has had a better start to his Raiders career than Bowers, whose 15 receptions are better than Amari Cooper's 12 in 2015.
The Raiders have had no success running the ball. Entering Monday, they rank last in the NFL in yards rushing per game (49.0) and per carry (2.51). It would be easy to blame Zamir White, who in taking over for Jacobs — who signed with the Packers — and has rushed for 68 yards on 3.1 per carry through two games.
But to lay it all on White is short-sighted given the offensive line has given him — and the other running backs — almost no room to run.
“It isn’t Zamir,” Pierce said. "We've got to start up front. The big boys up front got to block. Bottom line. They know it. We are going to talk about it here in a few minutes.”
Here's an idea: Keep throwing Davante Adams the ball. That's exactly what Gardner Minshew did Sunday and it's a major reason the Raiders won. Adams caught nine passes for 110 yards and the tying touchdown with 3:54 left, which he set up by drawing a pass interference penalty that moved the ball to the 1-yard line. In the fourth quarter and the game on the line, Adams caught four passes for 86 yards.
The Raiders had 126 yards and nine first downs in the fourth quarter at Baltimore. They gained 430 yards and had 23 first downs in the other seven periods combined. It goes back to Pierce's point that the Raiders have a lot of issues, especially offensively, that one quality quarter shouldn't overshadow. Part of the issue was the unwillingness of first-year offensive coordinator Luke Getsy to take shots down the the field. He finally did in the fourth quarter, and that needs to be more common.
Linebacker Divine Deablo injured his hip in the fourth quarter and rookie left guard Jackson Powers-Johnson, who first had an undisclosed injury and then an illness, still has not played this season. Pierce said he did not have an update on either player.
49 — The number of consecutive games the Raiders lost when behind at least 10 points in the fourth until Sunday's comeback. Washington with 88 and Houston with 51 have the longest active streaks.
The Raiders play their first home game when the Panthers visit on Sunday.
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Gardner Minshew (15) celebrates after running back Alexander Mattison scored a touchdown against the Baltimore Ravens during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams, left, catches a touchdown pass against Baltimore Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey (44) during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Gardner Minshew (15) celebrates after the Las Vegas Raiders defeated the Baltimore Ravens in an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)