The race for the 2020 Summer Games is undoubtedly being decided (a little) during the month of March 2013. The IOC evaluation commission began its four-day visit to the Japanese capital on Monday March 4. A battalion of 14 people, IOC members and experts of all kinds, led by Sir Craig Reedie. She will continue her route, ignoring the time difference, via Madrid in the middle of the month, before landing in Istanbul after the arrival of spring.

What is being said there, between two site visits and a few press conferences? What must we understand and decipher, behind the speeches of good intentions and the smiles of convenience? Looking for answers in French is like trying to read the future in coffee grounds. The French-speaking media seem largely disinterested in the event. At best, they stick to the facts. At worst, they simply ignore its existence.

Not a word in the French general press since the start of the visit of the IOC envoys to Tokyo. The daily website L'Equipe however, has a blog dedicated to the Games, “Objectif JO”. But its last article, dated February, focuses on Sochi 2014. The daily, in its Monday edition, devoted a subject to the three-stage journey of the IOC evaluation commission. But it is titled on Istanbul and its billions (the budget for the Games there would reach 15 billion euros). A disturbing coincidence of the calendar: the Franco-German channel Arte is broadcasting, this Tuesday, March 5, a documentary entitled “The world after Fukushima. » For the rest, nothing. At a time when the project of a Paris candidacy for the 2024 Games comes back like a refrain as soon as there is talk of Olympicism, this indifference is not the best effect.

The curious reader will not find what he is looking for by looking through the French-speaking Belgian media. By looking towards Switzerland, he will learn by reading the Tribune de Genève that a Swiss candidacy for the Winter Games could only take place, at the earliest, for the 2030 edition. This is, at least, the opinion of an expert on the question, Jean-Loup Chapellet, interviewed by the daily after the no of the population of Graubünden to an attempt by Saint-Moritz for the 2022 Olympics. Not a line, however, on the visit of the IOC evaluation commission to Tokyo.

Good surprise: a dispatch was put online on the website of the Morning, based in Lausanne. It takes up the words of Shinzo Abe, the Japanese Prime Minister, on the evening of the first day of the Olympic inspection. A speech that was ultimately quite relevant, in which the Asian leader explains that organizing the 2020 Games in Japan would allow Tokyo to serve as an inspiration to many other cities. With this argument: “Soon, the questions facing Japan will be the same as those facing many other countries, such as how to breathe new life into an aging country (…). This is why the torch must return to Tokyo again. »

On the Canadian side, same media calm. One dispatch, just one, on the website of La Presse from Montreal. Published on the first day of the IOC visit, Monday March 4, it states the facts, but refrains from making the slightest comment.

Small consolation: the English-speaking media are not much more passionate about the event. THE New York Times ignores it superbly. THE Guardian released a single video on its website. It lasts less than a minute and begins with images of the arrival at Tokyo airport of Craig Reedie, the head of the evaluation commission, welcomed with a bouquet of flowers and greeted by a cohort of children. Clarification: Craig Reedie is British, as is Guardian.

So Olympic issues no longer interested the French-speaking media? Let us wait, before responding, for the continuation of the evaluation commission's visit to Tokyo. And, beyond that, those planned later in the month in Madrid and then in Istanbul. FrancsJeux will follow its progress. Daily.