All roads lead to the COJO Paris 2024. Mathieu Mériaux is a perfect illustration of this. Northerner by birth, former fencer turned fencing master, he spent nearly two decades in Australia before joining the adventure of the next Summer Games.
Fencing, triathlon, volleyball, the Franco-Australian has multiplied his experiences in the sporting movement down below, before risking a four-year detour into the more codified world of mathematics.
At the helm of volleyball at the Paris 2024 Games, he adds a new component to the bi-monthly series of interviews with sports managers from the organizing committee.
FrancsJeux : Your life before COJO Paris 2024?
Mathieu Mériaux: Before joining the OCOG in the fall of 2021, I lived in Canberra, Australia, where I left the world of sport to become deputy director general, for four years, of the Australian Mathematics Association. My role consisted in particular of organizing mathematics competitions and selecting the participants. But my career until then had been exclusively dedicated to sport. I grew up in France, in the North, where I practiced fencing until becoming a fencing master. In 2003, I went to Perth, Australia, to teach my discipline. I stayed in Australia for 18 years, during which I worked in the national fencing, triathlon and volleyball federations.
Your past experience of the Olympic Games?
I participated from the inside in three consecutive editions of the Olympic Games. The first dates back to London 2012, where I worked within the organizing committee for fencing competitions. Four years later, at Rio 2016, I accompanied the Australian beach volleyball team. Finally, I was an international technical official (ITO) for the volleyball tournaments at the Tokyo 2020 Games, on behalf of the international federation (FIVB).
A memorable memory from the Games?
It is quite special, since it concerns the incident involving a South Korean fencer, Shin A-lam, at the London Games in 2012. Dissatisfied with a refereeing decision, she remained seated on the track, in tears, for an hour. The scene was broadcast live on television in its entirety. We had absolutely not worked on such a scenario in advance. Real crisis management, live. The next day, the image was on the front page of every newspaper in London. The incident was terrible for the fencer, but very enriching for me. And she brought incredible media exposure to fencing. Another memory, more recent, was the victory of the French men's volleyball team in the final of the Tokyo 2020 Games. I had the chance to be a privileged witness, one of the rare spectators in the room.
The file at the top of the pile on your desk?
At this stage of the preparation, I am starting to work a lot on the sporting presentation of the competition: the look of the room, the design of the site... How to use technology, in particular, to serve the tournament. But we also have the desire, with my beach volleyball colleague, the former setter Yann Lavallée, to bring our personal touch to the organization of our disciplines. We are going to innovate on the volunteer system, by setting up a unique experience of rotations between volleyball and beach volleyball. For example, a volunteer could take care of an administrative task on Monday at volleyball, then find themselves in a field role the next day at beach volleyball.
The volleyball, beach volleyball and sitting volleyball venues: their strengths, the challenge in the run-up to the Games?
I am the only OCOG sport manager to be concerned by the three clusters of Paris, north, west and center. Volleyball will take place in hall 1 of the Arena Paris Sud, at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center. We will benefit from the hall with the greatest ceiling height. It presents no technical problems, it is perfectly suited to the organization of a volleyball tournament, with two stands to install. For beach volleyball, the setting will be completely different, since the competition is scheduled at the Tour Eiffel stadium, on the Champ-de-Mars. The site is grandiose and magnificent, with more than 14.000 seats, but you will have to deal with the numerous trees. The challenge is to marry nature and the park to harmoniously integrate the site. Finally, sitting volleyball will be played during the Paralympic Games at the Arena Paris Nord, in Villepinte. The site will have been used during the Olympic Games for boxing and one event – fencing – in the modern pentathlon. We will have to reconfigure it for sitting volleyball.
Paris 2024 will be a success for volleyball and beach volleyball if…
The French team's gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Games was diluted by the distance and the absence of spectators. At Paris 2024, we will have succeeded if we help create a new community of volleyball players and fans, by anchoring this sport more strongly in French culture. This will obviously go through the results of the Blues, but also through the presentation of volleyball.
