and now, the controversy of the standard bearers… – Libération

The criteria for wearing the tricolor flag during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Paris Games effectively eliminate very big names in French sport. No less was needed for a new controversy to arise.

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After the gauge of the opening ceremony, the official poster of the Games or the Aya Nakamura fever, here is the controversy of the week: has the French Olympic Committee (CNOSF) decided to do without French athletes best known for the role of standard bearer for the French team next summer?

For the first time, the four standard bearers of the Olympic and Paralympic teams (one man, one woman for each delegation) will be elected by their peers, announced Wednesday, March 13, the president of the CNOSF David Lappartient and Marie-Amélie Le Fur, president. of the Paralympic Committee (CPSF).

The federations will each be able to present a candidate, the vote will be done with all the athletes of the French delegation. The public will not be able to participate in this vote. To be able to apply, you must have already participated in the Olympic Games, a criterion excluding for example Kylian Mbappé (football), whose participation in the Games seems increasingly uncertain, Victor Wembanyama (basketball) or even Antoine Dupont (rugby 7s) , who have never participated in an Olympics before. With the stated aim of bringing out new faces, former standard bearers, such as judoka Teddy Riner who was at the Rio Olympics in 2016, are also excluded from the list of candidates.

It will also be necessary to “embody Olympic ethics and values”, according to David Lappartient, thereby excluding athletes who have been convicted of doping cases for example. This ethical criterion, which must be clarified on Monday by the Olympic committee, promises a nice puzzle: what about athletes convicted for facts totally unrelated to sport? Or Nikola Karabatic convicted in a sports betting case?

Barely revealed, these conditions have been criticized by many Blues, including the former standard bearer at the Tokyo Olympics (2021), judoka Clarisse Agbegnenou. The double Olympic champion, who appears among the popular favorites to occupy this role, took advantage of the publication of a survey placing her in the lead to occupy this position among women, to ironize about her exclusion. “There are the French and the figures who express a certain will and on the other side people work behind the scenes to impose discriminatory conditions to designate the flag bearers,” she writes on her X account. Conversely , once this “to-do list” was presented, athletes did not waste a minute to (re)say that the job interested them, from Florent Manaudou to boxer Estelle Mossely. Verdict mid-July.