Paris 2024 Backs Athletes Funding Call to French Government

(ATR) Organizing committee president Tony Estanguet tells Around the Rings he "shares the concerns of the sports movement" over uncertainties around the government’s sports budget.

Last week, 380 French sportsmen and women, including Olympic champions Teddy Riner and Martin Fourcade, signed an open letter to French president Emmanuel Macron demanding that public support for sport be maintained.

In the letter, they criticize a potential cut of 1,600 staff across French sport by 2022, adding that a reduction of the sports budget for 2019 is "contradictory" with the aim of leaving a positive Olympic legacy for future generations. "The French sports family is in danger. We, athletes and top athletes, are very worried," the athletes said.

Their concerns were echoed by the presidents of summer and winter Olympic federations in a separate letter to Macron, who called for uncertainties over sports funding and policy to be quickly resolved.

Paris 2024 points out to Around the Rings that French sports minister Roxana Maracineanu has indicated the sports budget has not decreased on the previous year and no sport technical advisors will lose their jobs, although their positions would "evolve".

"The sports ministry explained that the budget had been ‘preserved’ [frozen] because an expenditure had been overstated in the previous year’s budget. As per the French ministry of finance’s 2018 law, the budget had already decreased by 30 million," Paris 2024 told ATR.

Paris 2024 said Estanguet is "closely following these discussions and has liaised several times with the French minister of sports on this subject".

"Yes, I understand this concern and I share it, I'm very close to it, I know it's very complicated," he said in a statement.

"We decided to be a candidate and if we won the Games the aim is still to support the development of sport in this country. Maybe I am wrong, but I think it would be worse if we had not had the Games, there would probably be a more difficult scenario."

Estanguet added: "We will not succeed in the challenge of having strong sport in this country without the involvement of the State. At the same time, we must admit that solutions must be found. Sport, like other sectors, must enter into funding efforts."

Denying the French government’s sports budget issues would impact Paris 2024 preparations, the organizing committee told ATR: "France’s victory in hosting the Games has allowed us to maintain the involvement of all actors.

"The sports minister is working diligently to find solutions so that the ambition remains as high as possible, but it is the French Government’s responsibility to lead discussions with the sports movement.

"Paris 2024 will play its role. The development of sports practice in France is at the heart of our project: to promote Olympic and Paralympic sports."

At the end of September, the French national Olympic committee launched a petition calling for more government resources for sport. The 2019 finance bill is currently being debated by the French Parliament.

Reported by Mark Bissonand Miguel Hernandez

25 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.