Paris 2024 Olympic Bid Team Takes Shape

(ATR) Around The Rings has learned that Bernard Lapasset and Tony Estanguet will be the faces of the Paris bid.

The World Rugby president is to helm the bid team supported by the French IOC member, a three-time canoe gold medalist.

Etienne Thobois will be chief executive with the French NOC’s international relations executive Michael Aloisio as chief of staff.

Thobois, a badminton Olympian and managing director of the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France, has worked closely with the IOC on various projects and his consultancy firm Keneo worked for the Tokyo 2020 bid.

The bid leadership team has been approved by stakeholders in the French sports movement as well as Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, the region and government ministers, ATR is told.

ATR understands that the Lapasset-led French Committee for International Sport, which has been involved in an 18-month-long scoping study to determine whether Paris should enter the 2024 race, will transition to the bid team in the coming six to eight weeks.

Additional appointments will soon be announced, and French IOC member Guy Drut will be active for the bid. The highly-respected Jean-Claude Killy, who quit the IOC last year after steering preparations for the Sochi 2014 Olympics, is also expected to have a key role.

The move comes after the Paris Council formally passed a resolution to support a 2024 bid on Apr. 13, the last remaining political obstacle in the city’s quest to secure the Games. The IOC chief Thomas Bach’s positive discussions with French president Francois Hollande on Thursday gave the bid lift-off.

Lapasset, Estanguet and Thobois will be in the French delegation heading to Lausanne for talks with the IOC on June 3, part of the invitation phase for the 2024 Olympics.

ATR has learned that the official announcement declaring that Paris will bid for the 2024 Games is unlikely to come before that meeting.

The Paris bid is keen to come to the 2024 bid table as fully formed as possible.

Work still needs to be done by the French Committee for International Sport on budget issues and the project’s technical side to unveil an advanced bidding concept to the world.

In keeping with Bach’s reforms package, the Paris bid will align with Agenda 2020. There will be a commitment to use as many existing venues as possible.

For certain, Paris will throw its hat into the ring before the IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur at the end of July.

Until Paris 2024 launches, regular meetings of the French Committee for International Sport with all stakeholders in the bid are scheduled. The committee’s top officials, drawn from across the French sports movement, will meet every six weeks in the coming months.

Paris would join Boston, Hamburg and Rome as the cities bidding for the 2024 Games. Other cities thought to be mulling a bid include Baku, Budapest and Doha. India is also considering a tilt at the Olympics.

Reported by Mark Bisson

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