Victory breeds victory, they say. Put back on track by the success of Paris in the race for the Summer Games in 2024, French sport is regaining ambition. And, in the process, a voracious appetite for big events.
As proof, the announcement from the French Cycling Federation (FFC) of its candidacy for the world championships in 2023. It came from its president, Michel Callot. The manager explained this during a press conference organized on Sunday July 1, on the sidelines of the French road championships in Mantes-la-Jolie: “ The French Cycling Federation is openly putting itself in the ranks and is already actively working to express a candidacy admissible by the UCI for this deadline of 2023, and to bring together these Worlds in France"
According to UCI rules, the Worlds in 2023 must bring together all the Olympic disciplines (road, track, BMX, mountain bike) in the same region. A new constraint which excludes contenders who do not have a velodrome meeting international standards. Clarification: the UCI imposes this constraint from the 2023 season, only for pre-Olympic years.
France has not organized the Road Cycling Worlds since the 2000 edition, contested in Plouay, in Morbihan. But it hosted the world track championships in 2015, at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome. This equipment was chosen for the Olympic events of the Paris 2024 Games. BMX competitions are also planned near the national velodrome. Mountain biking, for its part, must stretch its route over the neighboring hill of Élancourt, also located in the Yvelines department.
A winning file? The UCI will have to decide, but France emerges as the favorite. David Lappartient, the new boss of world cycling, is French. He led the FFC for 8 years, before giving up his seat to Michel Callot. An advantage.
Above all, the UCI could achieve a double blow by opting for the French candidacy: a first edition of the World Championships in all disciplines in the future host city of the Games, and the possibility of taking advantage of the global meeting to organize the pre-Olympic tests. Michel Callot clarified this on Sunday July 1 at a press conference: the sites of the Paris 2024 Games will not all be included in the application file for the 2023 Worlds. It could be difficult, in particular, to set up a rehearsal in 2023 of the road event of the Paris Games, the course of which must end on the Champs-Élysées. But the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome represents, according to Michel Callot, “ an obligatory and almost unavoidable crossing point"
With such a file, France seems capable of continuing its momentum and pinning a new event to its hunting list. For the year 2023 alone, it has already won the organization of the Rugby World Cup and the Alpine Skiing World Championships, two competitions where the competition was nevertheless solid (Ireland and South Africa for rugby, Austria in the case of skiing). alpine). With cycling, she would refuel.
