After the Tokyo Olympics and a lackluster record of 33 French medals, Emmanuel Macron announced the color for the next edition. To the Olympic and Paralympic athletes, received at the Élysée, the Head of State had affirmed his wish to see France triumph at home. “I am often asked about the objective of medals set for Paris 2024. I leave it to those concerned to define it. But I am not one of those who set themselves the ambition of doing at least as well. I tell you very clearly, we must do much more! Much more. Because these are our Games, at home, and it is expected. »
If nothing prevents us from being ambitious, in reality, have our authorities put everything in place to allow French athletes to shine at home? Opinions differ on this thorny issue of support for athletes in France.
“We did not know how to manage the situation after Rio”
Olympic vice-champion in Rio in 2016, Sarah Ourahmoune believes that the dynamic has not been sufficiently triggered after certain competitions. Asked by Point during the Demain Le Sport conference day, the former boxer regrets this disinvestment. “We have tried to put in place initiatives to improve performance, but it is very irregular depending on the sport. If I’m just talking about mine, boxing, we are very behind because we should have taken advantage of the Rio Games where we had good results to create enthusiasm, detect young people and bring them to the highest level. It hasn’t been done. I don’t know if it was a political choice or as if it were unprecedented, we were unable to manage this situation. After its harvest in Brazil in 2016 with six medals, French boxing left Tokyo empty-handed.
And the rings are not the only ones affected by this feeling of abandonment. In athletics, where podiums have been rare in recent years, Stéphane Diagana says young talents are too often faced with dilemmas and sacrifices. The world champion in the 400m hurdles in 1997 observed this himself as president of a club on the Côte d’Azur: “I can clearly see the difficulty for promising young people to continue their career as soon as we start to increase training rates. It’s hard for them to do it at the same time as their studies on the side, and yet they are among the best French people in their age categories! Sometimes we lose them and it’s unfortunate. We have a lot of work to do with National Education to better understand the status of young top athletes. »
Rethinking the sports agenda from childhood to adulthood
For the current consultant from France Télévisions, certain shortcomings unfortunately cannot be made up for by Friday July 26, 2024, the date of the opening ceremony of the Paris Games. “Regarding athletics, we have known that for a while we will be in difficulty because we have an age group that is not there, that of 26-29 years old, which usually contributes around 50% of the medals. The younger ones will have to grow quite quickly and the older ones will have to last a little longer. It is necessary to optimize and give means to these athletes, it is all the stake for these next two years. There are needs today but also choices, which are sometimes difficult to make, within each sport. When we are in the logic of optimization in the short term, we know where the chances of medals are, in athletics as elsewhere, and we have to decide. In the medium to long term, substantive work is needed and this goes much further: quite simply the place of sport in our society. »
And how exactly can the vision of sport in France be improved? School and higher education are major challenges for high-level sport, with a balance to be found between lessons and training. The question also arises for athletes who work as employees. For the Olympic fencing champion Romain Cannone, we must bet on this in the future. “We should encourage universities to accompany these athletes, to tell them that the values of an athlete are interesting for their reputation. We have to manage their time. Same for work, it’s not just big companies that can have professional athletes. Start-ups should also be able to accommodate them. »
Regarding the financial question, the Tokyo gold medalist insists on this point: having supporters is also a separate activity in the agenda of an athlete. “For all that is sponsorship, you must not forget it and it takes time, the idea is not to have 1,000 sponsors, but just 4-5 who support you and who understand your job time. As far as infrastructure is concerned, the National Sports Agency (ANS) has been tasked with installing and renovating 5,000 sports equipment at a cost of 250 million euros. It remains to be seen whether these facilities will have helped our athletes in time.
More athletes = more medals?
Should we see the glass half empty for Paris 2024? Hosting the Olympic Games confers advantages for French athletes, as Sarah Ourahmoune reminds us. “When we look at what the English, the Brazilians and the Japanese have done recently, we see that there are better results with the Olympics at home. We have more quotas to register more athletes, and when we are included in it, it is a real relief: we can directly focus on the Games and we lose less nervous impulses wondering when and how we are going to qualify. »
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Even if there was no great revolution in sport like in Great Britain for the 2012 Olympics, Stéphane Diagana wants to remain confident about France’s ability to shine in two years. “The Games are not yet done! We must not have a totally pessimistic speech, some sports in France have very good results. For example, I was impressed by the rebound made by swimming after the Tokyo Olympics. We had an identical situation to that of athletics and today, they are opening up much better prospects for 2024. ” And until then, other talents can still emerge, in order to get closer to the very ambitious balance sheet set by the president.
