Politique Internationale — For the first time, the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games are directly linked to the ministry. What does this mean exactly?
Amélie Oudéa-Castéra — At the start of his second term, the President of the Republic decided, alongside the Prime Minister, not only to give the Ministry of Sport full authority and powers, but also to add the success of the Games to its priorities. As our country hosts the Summer Games for the first time in a century, and the Paralympic Summer Games for the first time in its history, it was essential to reinforce the event’s political backing with a ministry acting as a ‘team leader’ with regard to the whole ‘French team’ running the Games.
P. I. — Does the link between the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the ministry reinforce your ability to act more generally?
A. O.-C. — It gives it increased responsibilities in any case. And that’s a very good thing! Because it stems from a conviction: that the Games, precisely because they constitute the leading sports event on the planet, have an unparalleled power of transformation, and that they must make it possible to turn France into a great sporting nation, in accordance with the wishes expressed by the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. This idea, furthermore, is at the heart of the ‘legacy’ of the Games that we will be building from now on, for example with the 30 minutes of daily physical activity that was introduced for the 6.5 million pupils in nearly 50,000 primary schools since the start of the 2022 school year, obviously carried out in close collaboration with my colleague Pap Ndiaye.
P. I. — How are you organising your work with regard to the Olympic and Paralympic Games? What are the main avenues?
A. O.-C. — The Games have an extraordinary magnitude. For my part, I usually say that succeeding at the Games means achieving a quartet of requirements, a ‘magic quadrant’ of objectives. First, irreproachable organization, particularly in terms of budget control, safety, transport and respect for our ecological commitments. Of course, it also entails athletes at the peak of their performance, since we will be truly thrilled only if our athletes win medals. Preferably gold. So that these Games can fully belong to the people of France, they must also be a true popular celebration, and this is what Paris 2024 is working on particularly with regard to several high points, such as the torch relay, which will spur the whole country with Olympic and Paralympic momentum. Finally, as I said, these Games must leave a useful and lasting legacy: both material, with the major development projects designed for Seine-Saint-Denis, but also immaterial, by finally giving sport the place it deserves in our country. There are numerous projects under way for creating, in a little over a year, the most beautiful sports festival ever organized in France. All of this, I assure you, is moving ahead with the permanent mobilization of all those involved, with a particularly active ministry and a vigilant and supportive government.
P. I. — Has this link between the ministry and the Olympic and Paralympic Games led to an overhaul of the ministry with regard to its classic organizational or operating patterns?
A. O.-C. — In 2019, with the Games in sight, the ministry had already undergone a reorganization with the creation of the National Sports Agency, which has the wonderful – and weighty! – responsibility of leading our sportsmen and women to Olympic and Paralympic heights. Moreover, for several years now, Paris 2024 and Solideo, which were created when Paris was named as host for the Games, have been doing remarkable work under the auspices of the inter- ministerial delegation to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, whose role is to coordinate the Games’ main players. In my opinion, more than a reorganization, this new link between the ministry and the Games is above all a sign that we are now entering the home stretch, and that we needed a strong ministry that was capable of multiplying synergies, within the territories and with regard to the athletes, in service of the Games’ success. This is what I do every day, in particular with a sports department repositioned as the ministry’s staff directorate, which has expanded its team dedicated to the Games. The ministry has also reorganized itself territorially through a rapprochement with the National Education ministry.
P. I. — There are a large number of stakeholders involved with the Olympics: the organizing committee, Paris’s city hall, the public authorities, the ministry. How do you work in harmony?
A. O.-C. — One factor has first of all to be taken into account: all these players and, more broadly, the vast majority of our compatriots, are eager for the Games, and even passionate about them. We are all aware of how lucky we are to participate in the organization of an event whose impact and emotional power are, from every point of view, extraordinary. Bearing this part of the dream in mind, and also obviously with high standards and great reliability, we are advancing methodically, step by step, towards July 26, 2024, the date on which the Seine will light up to make way for some 10,000 athletes from all over the world. We are totally mobilized towards a single goal: the success of these Games. There are many players who are invested and committed: at the highest State level, we have the valuable involvement of Emmanuel Macron and Élisabeth Borne; we have the City of Paris and the Île-de-France region, which have played a pivotal role since day one; we have the Greater Paris metropolis; we have the nearly 70 host communities that work alongside us, and up to 3,000 local communities that have chosen to ‘join the movement’ and become ‘Terres de Jeux’ or Games preparation centres. We must also pay tribute to the kind of commitment that goes beyond the public authorities: the numerous companies that are supporting an organizing committee which is financed 97% by private money, and the millions of sports-playing volunteers who are already key players in Paris 2024.
P. I. — The difficult economic context has crept into Olympic thinking over the past few months, notably with regard to the budget. Might it darken the outlook for Paris 2024?
A. O.-C. — The Games finance the Games. That remains our goal, and it is the roadmap that guides the work of Tony Estanguet and his teams as well as Solideo. Obviously, the current context constitutes an additional challenge. The organizing committee, financed, as I said, more than 97% by private resources, is not immune to changes in economic circumstances. We must take into account the transition from an initial assumption for inflation of 1.4% to the one we have today, around 6%. For this reason, work is currently being carried out with Paris 2024 to identify all possible avenues for savings and rationalization, with the very clear goal of downgrading nothing in the ambition of the project nor in the athletes’ and spectators’ experience. The promise of a sober Games must also be kept financially. As far as infrastructure in concerned – traditionally the main source of budget overruns in Olympic Games projects – we have no particular concerns at this stage. That is all the more important since that is the line in the budget where the vast majority of public funding is concentrated. It contributes to the construction of permanent structures that will constitute the legacy I mentioned earlier, for the territories concerned and their inhabitants. I am thinking, for example, of the contribution to the financing, in conjunction with private promoters, of the Olympic village and the media village, which afterwards will turn into more than 4,000 housing units with the highest standards of inclusive and sustainable living, 40% of which will be social housing. Today, whether on works, deadlines or costs, commitments are kept. The effects of inflation will be taken into account, within a framework that was anticipated and in concert with the various funders of Solideo, as has been the case in the past. I want to salute the rigor and professionalism of Nicolas Ferrand and the Solideo teams, in charge of the construction of the Olympic and Paralympic structures. For them, as for the teams of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, my role is to be a teammate – and a facilitator – who is both benevolent and demanding.
P. I. — And what about geopolitical tensions? Are you in communication with your foreign counterparts?
A. O.-C. — The stadiums, whether we like it or not, are the recipients of the world’s tensions. At present, these tensions are high, particularly because of the war in Ukraine. In this context, France is very clear about its response: absolute respect for the sovereignty of States, a response built and implemented in a multilateral framework. In the weeks following the invasion, France, alongside 36 sports ministers from the EU and associated countries, relayed the position of the IOC, which planned to exclude official Russian teams from all international competitions. Then, on July 4, we adopted a declaration demanding that Russian and Belarusian representatives also be suspended from the governing bodies of international sports federations. France’s solidarity with Ukraine is also reflected in the sports field. We have welcomed 91 Ukrainian athletes on our soil, where they can continue to train, with federal support. We are making sure that the Ukrainians have good preparation conditions, particularly with solidarity funding which allows for the costs of living expenses, transport, and equipment for sports competitions and preparation courses run in France to be covered. In this context, I would like to acknowledge the actions of the National Sports Agency, the sports federations, and certain associative clubs. The Ministry of Sport and the Olympic and Paralympic Games are asking the federations to exercise their prerogative not to select French athletes who sign new contracts with Russian or Belarusian clubs.
P. I. — There is a lot of talk about the legacy of the Games. How do you see this legacy?
A. O.-C. — Jean Castex, who knows this project inside out, having supported it first as an inter-ministerial delegate and then as Prime Minister, used to say that the specificity of the legacy of a major sporting event such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games is that it is created before the event. I believe that the French can be proud that Paris 2024 carries this sustainable vision in its DNA, and has done so since 2015, when the idea of hosting the Games in France was still in its infancy. The reality of what our country inherits from a one-of-a-kind project can be appreciated on several levels.
Among other things, these Games will be a large-scale ‘laboratory’ for the ecological transition of sporting events. With 95% of its equipment either ephemeral or already in existence, Paris 2024 will halve the Games’ carbon footprint. There’s no risk, therefore, of watching ‘white elephants’ of the kind that still haunt Rio or Athens, wither away. More broadly, the Olympic and Paralympic structures are examples of the city of tomorrow, with the athletes’ and media villages converted into eco-districts in the heart of Seine- Saint-Denis. This “material’ legacy of the Games is also a historic opportunity for the development of the youngest department in France, in which more than 80% of the project’s public investments are being concentrated, and for the inhabitants of the Ile-de-France region who, after 2024, will be able to swim in the Seine and the Marne.
P. I. — That means these are everyone’s Games …
A. O.-C. — Hosting the Games also means initiating an enormous drive to make France a ‘sporting nation’, to use the words of the President of the Republic. By supporting the plan for 5,000 local sports facilities, by allowing more than 6 million beneficiaries to have access to the Pass’Sport, or by developing physical activity at all life stages, the government has made this a cardinal point of its action. I am very lucky to belong to Élisabeth Borne’s team, where for the first time the Minister of National Education mentions sport in every speech, and where the Minister of Health has been entrusted with the subject of prevention, in which sport plays a key role. To make ‘Games by any means’ and put sport in every ministerial field, the President of the Republic has declared sporting activity to be the great national cause for 2024. Of course, the State is not acting alone beside the organizing committee. Local authorities, first and foremost among which are the communities hosting the events, the sports movement and businesses are all vital in ensuring that the Olympic and Paralympic flame does not go out on the evening of September 8, 2024.
P. I. — On a personal level, what memories or emotions related to the Games do you think about?
A. O.-C. — That is a difficult question! The Games have been th 
e setting for so many exceptional moments and performances that they are now etched in all our memories, and right around the world. We can even say that they are making history, as shown in recent years by the two Koreas united in the same delegation at the Pyeongchang Games, and in the smile of Hassiba Boulmerka, the first Algerian woman to win gold at the Games. As for sporting performances, I would say, as Roland Barthes said about the Tour de France in his Mythologies, that there is an ‘onomastics’ of the Games, which says in itself that they are a ‘great epic’ and even, to my mind, the greatest epic of our time. Bob Beamon, whom we recently had the pleasure of welcoming, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and, on the French side, Marie-José Pérec, Renaud Lavillenie, Laure Manaudou, Teddy Riner, Marie-Amélie Le Fur, Alexis Hanquinquant and of course Tony Estanguet, these are so many names that only need to be mentioned to open up a world of performances and emotions that only the Games can give us! Long live Paris 2024!
P. I. — As a former high-level athlete, do the Olympic and Paralympic Games speak to you differently?
A. O.-C. — I believe that, for any athlete, the Games are an unbeatable Holy Grail! Who has not dreamed, inside an Olympic stadium in meltdown, of seeing the French flag hoisted and hearing the Marseillaise ring out? And that goes for athletes all over the world. In 2021, for the Tokyo Games, even with a party held behind closed doors, who did not have a child, a teenager, an uncle, a cousin who got up in the middle of the night to watch our handball, basketball, volleyball or judo teams go on to win Olympic gold, at the end of their strength and of their lifetime dream? This is the magic of the Games: the competition between the best athletes in each discipline within the framework of the popular and democratic event par excellence, capable of bringing together 4 billion TV viewers. For our athletes, of whom I was indeed a member, this is a considerable motivation, and, as I was saying, we are doing our utmost to get them in the best possible frame of mind on D-Day. As minister, I am fully mobilized alongside the ‘team behind the team’, that is to say, all those who, whether within the National Sports Agency, the federations or establishments, are supporting coaches and athletes every day to allow them to win in France, at home, in front of their own people.
P. I. — At the present moment, are you already imagining yourself in 2024?
A. O.-C. — Of course, and to be honest, that’s nothing new. France has been waiting to host the Games for many years, and I think many of our fellow citizens remember, like me, with a twinge of the heart the infamous ‘disappointment of Singapore’ which marked the end of the Paris 2012 dream. But, for the past several years, it has been the ‘spirit of Lima’ that has animated us, that is to say, the ‘sacred union’ that means that France will, in a just over a year, meet its appointment with the Games – weeks of joy and pride for our fellow citizens. For the whole nation, I have the firm conviction that Paris 2024 will be one of those events that contribute to the expression of what is most beautiful about France: generosity and universalism.