Stephanie Jacquet, 49, is not an Olympic athlete, nor any kind of athlete at all.
“This is the first time in my life I’ve ever run anything,” she said. Yet there she was in a runner’s bib and a pink tutu past midnight on Saturday, jogging her way through Paris with tens of thousands of other people, cheered on by the crowds as if she were the most decorated of medalists.
The Marathon for All, as it was called, was the final grand flourish of an audacious Summer Games organized around the revolutionary idea that Paris itself could be a stadium, not apart from the sports but at their center.