The Tokyo Olympics promised to be a fiasco: the Japanese in their great majority did not want it; Japanese media, sponsors and public figures played the one up against the general outcry; the sanitary situation would certainly not allow the presence of spectators, promising dull games; athletes would be subject to a series of health rules that would certainly protect them from Covid but also from encounters and decompression, their movements being drastically limited to the journey between their hotel and the stadium. In short, after a postponement of a year, the Olympic Games seemed to us at a discount. And yet. Even if France did less well in terms of medals than at the Rio Games (thirty-three against forty-two), the national judo team managed to create a contagious enthusiasm, which materialized by their welcome. spectacular on their return to Paris. Proof that it is possible to applaud and love France, to be happy to say “we”, without falling into rancid nationalism.
Euro football did not keep its promises: favorites on paper, the Blues, despite their prestigious attackers, despite the popular fervor that accompanied them, floundered. Worse: we felt a bit cheated by these overly loved children unable to play collectively by going beyond their staged individualisms, among other things, during this bewildering sequence where the beers of one of the tournament’s sponsors were excluded from the conference press for religious reasons, even though these hated beers pay for their golden holidays. Decidedly, football has lost its fascinating political dimension, summing itself up to a very big budget show where activism for dummies has taken precedence over sport, this modern circus which nevertheless allows us to meet punctually around the values of courage , stubbornness, effort, and where suddenly the “us” makes vibrate.
The excitement around the Tour de France compensated for the drop in morale of the French, and it is not impossible that the anxiety-provoking atmosphere born of the waltz of increasingly ferocious variants and the unfounded but so noisy hysteria of the anti-health pass, anti-tax and other policies that have become the kings of electoral recovery, have pushed more and more in front of television, where they remain protected from external hazards, spectators exhausted by more than a year and a half of agonizing confinements . Thus, they were able to witness the victory of the French judokas, and if I suspect the vast majority of viewers of not understanding anything about the rules of judo – I am one of them – the pleasure of witnessing victories pulled out with the teeth, to appreciate the concentration, the iron will, but also the benevolence of these sportsmen, had a formidable calming effect. What collectively hope for a better tomorrow.
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Clarisse Agbégnénou, standard bearer and first gold medalist, has become a national heroine. Because she had never recovered from the silver medal in Rio, because the postponement of the Olympics was doubled for her by a depression, because she assumes, without sentimentality or false modesty, reality lived by many French people and transforms her weaknesses into an irrepressible desire to win, it was all the more impressive to see her burst into tears as soon as she won against the very one who had beaten her in 2016. And if not ‘ was not enough, we saw her, after the formal salutes, lift her opponent in the air, sharing with us, something quite unique, that only sport allows: past the healthy competition, there are only men left and women, panting, wounded, disappointed or victorious but united, aware of the feelings of the adversary and benevolent, exalted but respectful. Clarisse Agbégnénou has thus become a formidable symbol, that of a young woman capable of reversing the situation, by overcoming pain and anguish, while preserving her humanity.
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The superb mixed team victory against Japan was finally the occasion for a Marseillaise which we had missed so much during the Euro. It was then the Squadra Azzurra who provided the chills, screaming their hymn – which celebrates Italian unity – to break the ears, while allowing the uninhibited love of a country … a feeling that we so lack in these times of rupture at all levels of the nation. Suddenly, by the grace of sport, a French team made us bellow our Marseillaise, making us proud and happy to be French! Thank you !
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