The expression does not lack a certain elegance. This Tuesday, July 12, the board of directors of the COJO Paris 2024 will look into the “ concept review » of the next Summer Games. In short, the map of sites, still in draft form, is two years and a little more than two weeks from three times.
Worrying? Not in the least, insists the COJO. Tony Estanguet and his team are not giving up: each new stroke of the pencil on the plan of future Olympic and Paralympic sites “ strengthens the project“. Cool. They also recall that badminton and gymnastics changed playing fields less than two years before the deadline in London 2012. More recently, the Tokyo 2020 marathon was relocated to Sapporo in the final stages of preparation.
However, the series drags on. Above all, it gives the COJO the impression of a ship struggling to keep its course.
One file crystallizes all the tensions: the preliminary round of basketball. Its episodes follow one another without really moving forward, to the point of turning into a standoff between the COJO and the international federation (FIBA), with the IOC in the role of arbiter, and ultimately decision-maker.
A few hours before a board meeting where the question will once again be debated, but without being definitively decided, the positions of the two camps are as follows: the COJO is proposing a basketball/handball exchange, the first of the two team sports playing its preliminary phase in Lille before returning to Paris, the second doing the opposite; FIBA wants to stay in the capital, or at worst in the inner suburbs.
For the COJO, Lille and its Pierre-Mauroy stadium constitute the only possible option. “ The only one to check all the boxes“, we insist to the organizing committee. It would not increase the budget and would respect the balance of the Games.
An exchange between the two sports will be presented this Tuesday, July 12 to the board of directors. In the event of validation, a highly probable scenario, it will then be proposed to the IOC. The OCOG will not submit an alternative.
FIBA, for its part, continues to express doubts about Lille's capacity to receive the preliminary round. His latest card: temperature. The international body fears that the heat will rush into the Pierre-Mauroy stadium and threaten the smooth running of the matches. She explained this very clearly to the OCOG.
As a good student, the organizing committee took back its notebooks and carried out the investigation. He noted that the last two major indoor team sport events in Lille, the World Volleyball League and EuroBasket in 2015, took place without the slightest temperature difficulty.
A Paris 2024 team even went to Lille last month, at the height of the heatwave in the last days of spring. She discovered that the temperature was 22.3° on the field when the thermometer climbed to 35° outside.
Better: the COJO commissioned a technical study on the possibility of air conditioning the Pierre-Mauroy stadium during the Games. Its findings were sent to FIBA. “ They have questions for us“, we explain at Paris 2024.
According to an internal source at the organizing committee, FIBA has never traveled to Lille, since the start of discussions, to study the reality of the site and playing conditions on site.
Determined not to have players travel to the North of France, the international basketball body even suggested using a hall at the Parc des Expositions in Villepinte, in Seine-Saint-Denis, the latest site to date. add to the Paris 2024 system. But the option is not retained by the COJO.
The standoff continues. He will come back ultimately it is up to the IOC to decide the question. When ? Mystery. “ There is no deadline for making a decision“, specifies the OCOG.
Elsewhere, fortunately, the grass turns out to be greener. The Paris 2024 board of directors should validate this Tuesday, July 12, the hosting in Hall 8 of the Villepinte Exhibition Center of the preliminary rounds of boxing (the finals will be played at Roland-Garros), sitting volleyball, and of the initial fencing event of the modern pentathlon.
Above all, it should complete the other hot issue on the site map: shooting. Initially hosted at La Courneuve, in Seine-Saint-Denis, the discipline will be contested in Châteauroux, in the Indre department. All stakeholders reached agreement, earlier than expected. The letter of commitment from communities, including the metropolis of Châteauroux, arrived at the COJO on Monday July 11.
The last point of the discussion concerns the cost of renting the National Sports Shooting Center (CNTS), owned by the French federation. It would be around 5 million euros, compared to 17 million at the start of the exchanges. A good deal.
