Despite having an advertising sign on its roof, the Gai Logis housing residence goes unnoticed by most people. Yet it is located just a few meters away from the A1 freeway to Lille where countless motorists drive right by it daily. Across the street, thousands of spectators at the Stade de France pass by on match nights. The building's 480 residents have become accustomed to living sandwiched between these two monsters. Its tenants no longer even notice the irony of its name. On the afternoon of April 25, a few elderly women who live in the building stood at their windows, smartphone in hand, to capture images of the gathering in front of their home, hoping to spot a star among the officials in suits and white sneakers.

Le Monde visited 93 days from the start of the Olympic Games – 93, that's also the administrative number of the French department that the Stade de France is located in, Seine-Sant-Denis. At a small ceremony, local elected officials and promoters of the competition came to remind everyone that the region will be hosting a dozen events between July 26 and August 11. There were no stars, just the town's Socialist mayor (Mathieu Hanotin), the Socialist president of the Seine-Saint-Denis departmental council (Stéphane Troussel) and the head of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games organizing committee (Tony Estanguet). The audience was rather quiet, slightly unsettled by the loud, rough sound coming out of the speakers playing the local band NTM.

Rapper JoeyStarr, a native of Saint-Denis, lent his voice to a promotional clip celebrating the "desire, rage and determination" of the inhabitants of the "9-3" – "from the Basilica of Saint-Denis to the glorious Stade de France, there are legions of us entering the dance." The organizing committee had promised to include the poorest department in mainland France in the Olympic Games festivities. They emphasized that the €9 billion budget for the Olympic Games could not possibly go to Paris alone. And Saint-Denis, with its more than 110,000 inhabitants, holds a crucial card: the Stade de France.

This is where the athletics events, the signature Olympic sports, will take place. It's where the closing ceremony will occur, and perhaps the opening ceremony if the security conditions in the heart of the capital, along the Seine, are not suitable. Finally, this is where some of the magic of the national narrative will reside. Its rounded roof has shone like a halo since Zinédine Zidane blessed the site with two victorious headers in the football World Cup final on July 12, 1998. The stadium was six months old at the time, and it was a time when big promises were made, specifically that the stadium would help integrate the suburbs, instill pride and symbolize national unity. Many of these promises have since been broken. But that doesn't prevent us from repeating them, 26 years later, with the same backdrop.

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