Two staffers with the Olympic broadcast team for Australia’s Nine Entertainment were attacked during an attempted robbery in Paris, France, on Monday afternoon, reports revealed later in the week.
The thieves attempted to steal their backpacks as the tech staffers were walking to their accommodations.
The two staffers, who were not identified or described in Nine Entertainment’s account of the incident, were walking to their lodgings in the northeastern Parisian municipality of Le Bourget when a “group of people” accosted them.
The assailants, who also were not described in the account, scuffled with the two staffers when they were unable to seize their backpacks. The incident was reported to French police and to Australia’s chef de mission in Paris, Anna Meares.
“It was clear it was a robbery because they went for the backpacks. There was no weapon used, but there was quite a significant assault,” Nine Entertainment reporter Christine Ahern said in a radio interview on Wednesday.
“The two workers managed to get away, but obviously it’s a worry,” Ahern said. She described the victims as “okay” but “shaken up” by their experience.
Nine Entertainment sports director Brent Williams also described the attack as having a “serious physical nature.” He distributed an internal memo to crew members in Paris warning them to be careful when commuting to the network’s broadcast center.
The assault on the tech workers came less than 48 hours after a 25-year-old Australian woman was allegedly gang-raped by “five men of African appearance” in a nightclub district.
The victim was found in a “stunned state” outside a kebab shop, with her dress “’backwards’ and partially torn off,” as Australia’s News.com reported.
CCTV footage later surfaced of the terrified woman seeking shelter in the kebab shop, only for one of her alleged rapists to approach her and give her a pat on the back. One of the customers in the shop drove the man off.
“It sounds horrific,” Meares said of that assault. “Obviously, our hearts go out to the woman involved, and we hope she’s been cared for and supported in the trauma that she’s experienced.”
Australians have been advised to exercise extreme caution while in Paris, and Australian athletes have been warned not to travel alone or wear their uniforms outside of the Olympic Village.
Nine Entertainment reported on Thursday that Olympic preparations have dissolved into “chaos,” with Australian athletes being driven to the wrong venues in lengthy commutes on buses that lacked both air conditioning and windows that could be rolled down.
Meares phlegmatically described the situation as “less than ideal.”
“It has disrupted the schedules of our athletes — who, for example, have been delayed in their return back to the village, missing physio and recovery time allotments,” she said.
