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There is professional reasons and 'professional reasons'.
Realistically, securing the American Olympians would not have involved the FBI, much less the head of the FBI. Unless there was a terror attack planned or something. Even then, the idea that the director of the FBI himself visits the Olympics under the cover of being a tourist to foil some evil terrorist plot seems like a QAnon-level conspiracy.
The way I see it, it used to be that the head of a a federal law enforcement agency would try to seem neutral. Probably FBI directors have visited the Olympics in the past in their own time, but few will have leveraged their position to party directly with the Olympians.
It is just one of the perks of working for Trump. I mean, sure, you have to take your cues from the administration regarding whom to investigate and whom not to investigate, but nobody will bat an eye if you use your position for your own goals. Given the general baseline of the Trump administration, 'got invited for partying because he was the director of the FBI' does not even register. He would have to leak classified intel to narcos or something before anyone would claim that he is worse than the median.
This, at least, has not historically been true, and has not been true for nearly thirty years; the Centennial Park bombing means that the FBI has treated every Olympics as a hotspot that requires pre-event and during-event oversight. ((There's actually a pretty long list of things that fall into this category.))
That's separate from the question of whether Patel, specifically, needed to be or should have been anywhere near it, or having been there, whether it was necessary or appropriate to also gladhand the people his organization was supposedly protecting.
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