Four days before the second round of the presidential election, athletes are mobilizing against the far right. After several forums published in the press and on franceinfo in recent days, this time it was 200 people, athletes, leaders, presidents of clubs and federations, who gathered on the evening of Tuesday April 19 at the Institut judo in Paris.
TRIBUNE >> Athletes call to vote Macron: “Defending sporting values is to refuse the coming to power of the far right”
A small stage was hastily set up in the middle of the judo mats. The speeches are linked: the former athletics champion Mehdi Baala, rugby players also with a good part of Racing 92 behind the international XV of France Gaël Fickou. “It’s not easy to position yourself in sport or to say what you really thinkdevelops the rugby player. But it’s just about our values and the diversity that is important to them. I was playing with Ibrahim Diallo, who is a Muslim, and yet I am a Christian. I come from Senegal and he is from that country. It’s the France of today and we are still lucky to be able to keep that, let’s do it.”
The values of sport are erected as a bulwark against the extreme right, in an environment where talking about politics publicly is not frequent and is not frankly recommended. This improvised gathering in a few days is therefore far from trivial for Stéphane Nomis, the president of the French Judo Federation: “There are top athletes who told us no because they were afraid to position themselves. They are afraid of social media and fallout. But, he addswe must still say loud and clear that we do not want to have the Olympic Games under the National Front era.
“Athletes are not subhuman. They have the right to be politicized too. They have always been told that they are apolitical, but by what right?”
Like his counterpart in athletics André Giraud, another federation represented on Tuesday evening, Stéphane Nomis says he is ready to leave office if Marine Le Pen is elected. Much sharper positions than five years ago. In 2017, only one shy platform had come from the world of sport between the two rounds of the presidential election.
“There are about ten federations with which we have set up an inclusion program through sportsays Jean-Philippe Ascenci, president of the Agency for Education through Sport, at the origin of the gathering. It’s brand new and it means that the federations are mobilizing today, that there is a new dynamic and that we want to play our place in society. We want to be heard. There are 17 million people who are members of sports associations, that counts.” All the more so at the end of a campaign in which sport was one of the main absentees.
The world of sport mobilized against the far right: report by Nicolas Perronet
