'Un-volunteers' hope to disrupt 2024 Paris Olympics from the inside

Retired and with time to kill, Bernard Gauvain wants to be a volunteer at the 2024 Olympics — but a bad one.

His intention is not to help out, but to gum up the Olympic machine by refusing to turn up for work. If others do likewise in sufficient numbers, he hopes they'll sting the VVIP who stands to gain if the Paris Games run triumphantly like clockwork: French President Emmanuel Macron.

The 68-year-old former agricultural consultant in southern France is part of an otherwise mostly hush-hush band of Olympic opponents who call themselves "un-volunteers." Also anti-Macron — the president has ignited a months-long firestorm of French protest with unpopular pension reforms — the anti-Olympic Trojan horses are working to infiltrate and then disrupt next year's Paris Games by signing up as volunteers, posing as willing-to-help superfans when they're anything but.

Their surreptitious operation, and other Olympic contestation that is picking up online and starting to spill onto French streets, highlight a growing risk of the Paris Games becoming entangled in unflagging public anger against Macron for raising France's retirement age from 62 to 64.

Efforts by Macron's opponents to link protests to Olympic preparations that have otherwise been largely smooth and low-key raise the possibility that the Games themselves could be whacked by demonstrations and strikes if fury pushes into 2024 unabated.

So far, protests targeting Olympic preparations have been small and sporadic. Olympic organizers say polling shows enduring strong support for the Games that will showcase Paris' recovery from attacks by the Islamic State group that killed 130 people on Nov. 13, 2015. Athletes will compete against televisual backdrops of iconic