behind the scenes of the Olympic Games (episode 3/10)

Founded in January 2018, the Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (COJOP) moved to Pulse in 2021, on the former site of the Entrepôts et Magasins Générales de Paris, in Saint-Denis. A low-carbon construction which houses between 1,700 and 4,500 employees depending on the period © Mario Palmieri.

In mid-2015, the candidacy of Paris 2024 is recorded, but the road remains long to envisage a victory two years later, during the attribution planned for 2017. Boston, Rome, Los Angeles and Hamburg constitute strong competition. Athletes enter the scene and the lessons of the past must be understood…

After the candidacy, the sacred union

Tony Estanguet: Between the announcement of the candidacy and the award two years later, we experienced an extraordinary adventure. Our only target was the hundred or so voting members of the IOC.

Pierre Rabadan: Even if I didn’t experience it directly, because I was a rugby player at the time, I heard a lot about the failure of Paris 2012. It was still quite significant despite the announcement of the candidacy . Anne Hidalgo had been first assistant to Bertrand Delanoë, the one who had been blamed for the defeat: she did not want it to happen again. One of the major axes was to launch a real campaign, as in politics.

Teddy Riner, double Olympic judo champion (2012, 2016), bronze medalist (2008, 2021) and Olympic team champion (2021): When the idea of ​​Paris 2024 germinated, they came for me. An athletes’ commission was set up of which they asked me to be co-president with Marie-Amélie Le Fur (three-time Paralympic athletics champion). I said yes straight away, with great pleasure. They put the athletes forward because they learned from their mistakes. Who better than the athletes could talk about the Olympic Games and the Paris candidacy? Who better than the athletes could collect the candidacy as one gleans a trophy? It is not politicians who can talk about sport, it is athletes themselves.

Tony Estanguet: Putting the athletes back at the center was one of the two directions we corrected compared to Paris 2012, the other being our diplomatic effort. We had to make it clear to everyone that we were in competition and that we were not setting out to participate a sixth time in a row (between 1986 and 2017, five French applications for the Summer Olympics were failed). I rediscovered the adrenaline of competition: to succeed, you have to be ambitious, rigorous, all the details are important. After spending twenty years creating a bubble around me, I loved the meetings that this entailed: media, members of the sports movement, economic players, politicians…

Teddy Riner: As co-president of the athletes’ commission, I was often at meetings to think about how to put together the file, how to find ideas to motivate the partners, everyone who is around the table, so that the project can take shape and above all take place. It wasn’t easy, we started from a blank page. And for me, to be frank, I never, ever thought I would be present at the 2024 Games. I was really doing it for the next generation, the future generations. (Laughs.) I did it with all my heart and all my guts.

To avoid a new berezina, the application file for Paris 2024 is the subject of preparation worthy of a sporting competition, at the cost of collective questioning.

Étienne Thobois: To the very stupid question “Why do you want to host the Games?”, we provided formatted answers, thinking that if we had the best record, people would choose us… This time, we explained why we wanted to organize the Games as a territory. When you are president of the International Badminton Federation, knowing who you entrust your baby to is important.

Tony Estanguet: It was painstaking work. You had to put yourself in other people’s shoes, listen… to things that were ultimately logical, but which had not always been done.

Étienne Thobois: I’m not talking about revenge, but it was a long learning process. The project which, initially, was mainly focused on infrastructure – like all projects for around thirty years – has become a social project, with an intangible as well as tangible heritage.

Tony Estanguet: Concretely, we meet the international federations, the members of the IOC. We have to bring 200 countries on board. If I can give an image, the idea was to win each stage in order, on the day of the award, to pocket the game in three sets. I had to learn to speak in public, take lessons, because it was not my world and I had to interpret my speeches to convince. The challenge was to go from a good file to a winning file.

Teddy Riner: In 2016, at the start of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, we presented the Paris 2024 project to more than 2,000 international media. I spoke from the podium, I was terribly nervous in front of President Hollande. (Laughs.) There were a lot of handshakes, media initiatives, speaking engagements. We really had to address everyone. I still remember having a good laugh with all the athletes, especially with Marie-José Pérec.

Tony Estanguet: I was in the mindset of an athlete who trains every day and listens to what people tell him. This helped me to understand the expectations of politicians and bosses, to avoid falling into the traps of journalists. At the beginning of 2017, Bernard Lapasset told me: “The rest will be you, the members of the IOC want to know who they are going to vote for.“Thanks to him, I officially take the lead in the candidacy. Lapasset was a paternalistic person. Regarding tensions, he had an intuition and he wanted things to go well. We were exposed, with political actors who were waging their own battles. The failure of 2005 was attributed to the fact that they did not get along. Are they getting along better today? In any case, on the issue of the Games, they managed to put their differences aside.

Thierry Rey: We were able to show that we were a team, that was one of the keys to success. When (Valérie) Pécresse, (Emmanuel) Macron and (Anne) Hidalgo fight each other in the 2017 presidential election, a few months before the attribution, they are political animals. But for the candidacy, everyone was aligned, respected each other and listened to each other. The case was solid, it was our moment. There were too many symbols: the centenary of the 1924 Paris Olympic Games, the previous defeats, the seriousness with which we showed that we had understood certain things.