FrancsJeux is innovating. For the third year in a row, the website will unveil its list of international sports movement before the end of December. But, like last year, the formula is changing.
After having established in 2020 the ranking of the most influential French speakers in the Olympic world – an exercise that had consecrated Christophe Dubi, the IOC’s director of the Olympic Games – and then awarded last year its trophies in nine categories, FrancsJeux has opted for a different flavour.
The Olympic movement has often had to navigate through heavy weather throughout 2022, between the sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, the controversies at the Beijing Winter Games and then the World Cup in Qatar, and the revelations of corruption linked to the Tokyo 2020 Games. He is used to it and public too.
But the last twelve months have also highlighted the ability of its bodies and players to move forward, to show creativity, solidarity and innovation. The Olympic movement has not changed the world in 2022, but it has sometimes been able to use sport, its values and its impact to open new ways.
At the end of this very special year, where a geopolitical conflict followed without transition a health crisis, we thought it would be useful and relevant to highlight the most positive and remarkable initiatives, personalities and bodies of the sport movement. We selected twenty of them. Then the FrancsJeux board, a panel of experts, partners and international journalists, chose ten of them and ranked them from first to tenth.
The ten FrancsJeux favourites for 2022 will be revealed next week. In the meantime, here’s a taste of what’s to come with the full list of twenty nominees compiled by the editors of FrancsJeux:
The Paralympic Day organised by the Paris 2024 OCOG on 8 October;
The course of the Olympic marathon at the Paris 2024 Games between Paris and Versailles, inspired by the Women’s March in 1789;
Obstacle course as a new event in the modern pentathlon to replace horse riding;
Four French IOC members, with David Lappartient and Martin Fourcade joining the Beijing session in February;
Chinese youth volunteers at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games;
The Paris 2024 OCOG’s decision to hold the Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony in the middle of Paris, Place de la Concorde;
The “One Love” armband initiative by ten European federations before the 2022 World Cup;
Surfing, skateboarding and climbing to be fully included in the 2028 Los Angeles Games
Yiech Pur Biel, first refugee athlete elected as IOC member;
Olympic Movement solidarity with Ukraine;
Bing Dwen Dwen, the mascot of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games;
The addition of Ukraine to Spain and Portugal’s application for the 2030 World Cup;
World Athletics’ decision to assign the 2025 World Athletics Championships to Tokyo;
World Rugby’s decision to award the United States the men’s World Cup in 2031 and the women’s World Cup in 2033;
Gender parity, for the first time, in the IOC commissions;
The revival of the French-speaking world of sport, with the creation in a few months of French-speaking associations in fencing, surfing and squash;
The race for the 2036 Summer Games is already well underway, with bids announced or in preparation from Indonesia, Egypt, Mexico, South Korea, Qatar, etc;
The attendance, broadcast and audience records of the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Australia;
Stéphanie Frappart, first female referee at the 2022 Football World Cup;
The UCI’s initiative to organise the Afghanistan Women’s Road Cycling Championships in Aigle, Switzerland.
