"Ask me my three main priorities for Government and I tell you education,,education, and education," he said.

For the co-chairmen of the Paris bid, Bernard Lapasset and Tony Estanguet, along with the chief executive Etienne Thobois, the relevant sentiment would involve the words “consultation, consultation and consultation".

The meticulous efforts of these three men and the team they front are giving new life to the old French saying “Reculer pour mieux sauter” - “Step back, the better to leap forward”.

Compared to many Olympic bids, Paris has huge advantages. It already has superb transport infrastructure – albeit that some of those involved in it are currently coordinating strike actions – and is recognised as one of the great cities of the world, a perennial draw for tourists from all around the globe.

And, as Lapasset – now released from his highly successful tenure as chairman of World Rugby in order to concentrate his energies on the job of bringing the Olympics back to Paris 100 years after they were last staged there – pointed out during a media day at a rainswept Roland Garros, 85 per cent of all permanent venues required for a Games are already in place.

The only main sporting arena still to be settled upon is the aquatics centre, which has four potential sites around the Stade de France in St Denis that are currently being evaluated.

One thing is for certain. If Paris is awarded the Games at the 130th International Olympic Committee Session in Lima next year, you won’t be seeing any media stories along the lines of “Paris running out of time to complete velodrome” or “French hosts miss deadline on athletics stadium”. Virtually everything is already there.

What this means, as Thobois – a former French number one badminton player who competed at Atlanta 1996 – explained, is that Paris 2024 can work even harder at getting its “soft legacy” right, the business of what comes next after the Olympic show packs up and moves on to wherever after 17 days of frenzy.

And also, more urgently, at getting the ground prepared for progress towards the Olympic goal.

It had not escaped the attention of Messrs Lapasset, Estanguet - a triple Olympic canoe slalom champion - and Thobois that another Frenchman of high sporting renown, Guy Forget, has recently been busy voicing his enormous frustration with the way things happen in France. Or in his case, the way things don’t.

On the day Lapasset talked us through the big picture for Paris 2024, as stray drops of rain infiltrated the plastic sheeting which backed our table in the Roland Garros restaurant, there was no play possible at the French Open for the first time in 16 years, and only the third time in its history.

That prompted Forget – the former Davis Cup winner who was appointed tournament director of the French Open earlier this year – to vent his frustration over the continuing inability of Roland Garros to install a roof over its main Philippe Chatrier court.

“We’ve talked about this roof in Paris 15 years already...Today is the day to just say stop [talking],” he said.

“The concern today is to give a good image of our sport. I am a bit annoyed today. It’s hard.

“I’m coming to express my frustration. This is fact, proof that [a roof] is a necessity.”

Earlier in the week, as the elements had eroded rather than suspended the programme, Forget had said on the same topic: "I think it's a question of respect to the crowd, to the people, to you guys from the media and the players that are waiting hours and hours in the lounges, in the locker rooms.

"We wait and wait and wait and wait. While Wimbledon, Melbourne, and New York now have the roof, you know, we'll have to wait until 2020."

The planned €350 million (£272 million/$393 million) expansion of the grounds set in the leafy and plush western district of Paris has, however, hit trouble.

A new 5,000-seat stadium is planned for the neighbouring Serres d'Auteuil but work has come to a halt due to ongoing protests over the impact the work will have on the botanical gardens historic greenhouses which date back to the 19th century.

That stadium will only be completed at 2018 at the earliest.

Strangely enough, the suggestion that France might be a country where you have to wait and wat and wait did not sit too comfortably with Lepasset, Estanguet and Thobois.

They can’t change history. But they are doing all they can to smooth its course as they contemplate a centennial modern Olympics  in the French capital.

Unlike Annecy’s unsuccessful bid for the Winter Olympics and Paralympic Gamesof 2018, the Paris mobilisation for the Summer Games eight years hence has support from Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo all the way up to the President Francoise Hollande.

As Lapasset explained, whether Roland Garros got a roof, and a new court, by 2024 was “not crucial” to the bid. It is, as he pointed out, already one of the pre-eminent sporting locations in the world.

Other arrangements are more crucial, however.

Lapasset courteously explained at Roland Garros how he had done “a very important job” in talking to the leaders of all the major parties in France and giving them dossiers on the aspirations and plans of the Paris 2024 bidders.

So that, if Hollande is voted out in the Presidential elections next May, there should still be continuity for Paris 2024.

“It is key to us to have the support of the public and the political parties,” said Lapasset.

“I spoke to Nicolas Sarkozy a month ago and he told me, ‘I am fighting in politics, but I will never fight against the Olympics.’ That is very important for us.”

The meticulousness of the political preparation is matched in the commercial realm, where core sponsors are already being cossetted and encouraged to contribute not just money but expertise to whatever parts of the bid fit best with their operation, whether it is in delivering food or providing hotels or air travel.

Hollande turned up on evening earlier this week to a gathering in central Paris of chief executives from all the major sponsors. They are being valued and directed.

Public opinion, too, are being assiduously wooed. In April, Paris 2024 launched what Lapasset claims is “the biggest-ever public engagement initiative in Olympic bid history.”

The public is being invited to submit ideas and engage with the bid through organised meetings across the country, or online, with the top 100 ideas being considered for inclusion in the Paris 2024 project once the process ends on September 30 this year.

The polls which showed support for Annecy at around 50 per cent seem a world away now;  the figure espousing the 2024 candidature is consistently around 70 per cent, whether in the city, the region or the overall country.

Meanwhile, athletes are being carefully consulted by Estanguet, a member of the IOC Athletes Commission, and their input is being sought at all stages.

But perhaps the most telling riposte for Paris 2024 against the perception of France as a country where you can’t get things done was in a phrase Thobois repeated: “The power of the Games".

The possibility of hosting an Olympics can unlock many previously unrealised resources in prospective hosts. And once the Games have been secured, the seven-year countdown to delivery exerts its own vice-like force.

Guy Forget might like his roof now. But it might take until 2018. Or 2020. When you host an Olympics, however, there is only one deadline.