600,000 Fans in Paris Celebrate Peacefully

About 600,000 flag-waving, screaming fans jammed the Champs-Elysees yet again, this time to acclaim in person the heroes of France’s 3-0 World Cup victory over Brazil.

“What a day to be French! Champions of the world, at last,” 28-year-old Christian Bourdieu said Monday after the French soccer squad passed by on an open-topped, double-decker bus.

The Parisian avenue was so packed that the bus couldn’t complete its route to the Arc de Triomphe and had to escape off a side street.

There was no sign of the chaos just hours earlier, when postmatch celebrations turned sour after a panicked driver drove her car into a crowd of revelers, injuring 80 people, 11 of them seriously.

The driver, a 44-year-old teacher, turned herself in to police Monday. Police said she’d been undergoing psychiatric treatment for four years.

The celebration was the biggest in Paris since the World War II Liberation in 1944. Some French commentators expressed hope that the multiracial French team would help unite the nation.

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A day after the loss in the World Cup final, Brazilians were still wondering what happened. And the more explanations offered for what happened to star forward Ronaldo, the more questions arose.

“It’s clear that something happened that we don’t know about. And even if they told me what it was, it would be unethical for me to say it here,” Romario, the 1994 World Cup star cut from this year’s team at the last minute, told Globo News in Rio de Janeiro.

A Brazil team doctor said Monday that Ronaldo was stricken with convulsions for 30 to 40 seconds only hours before the World Cup final.

The 21-year-old soccer star was feeling “emotional stress” before the game, Dr. Lidio Toledo said from Paris. He added that he took Ronaldo to the hospital for a battery of tests that included an electrocardiogram.

Ronaldo said that after the convulsions he went to sleep and “woke up with pains all over my body.” “It was something real bad that I had never before felt in my whole life. I really felt bad. I had a headache, my stomach pained,” he told the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo. But he said he eventually felt better and thought he could play.

Nike denied pressuring Ronaldo or his coach to have the Brazilian star play in the World Cup final at Rome. The company has a 10-year sponsorship deal with the Brazilian team for a reported $200 million and in May signed an 11-year deal with Ronaldo’s club team, Inter Milan, worth at least $125 million.

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The biggest upset in a World Cup final in nearly five decades was of little help to ABC’s television ratings. The 40-market overnight rating for the France-Brazil final produced a 6.9 rating/17 share, 46% lower than the 12.8 overnight for the Brazil-Italy final in 1994. The final national numbers will be released Thursday.