Two candidates for the same position at the heart of one of the most serious crises that French sport has known in recent years. Tuesday, June 27, Emmanuelle Bonnet Oulaldj and David Lappartient spent – by videoconference – their great oral for the presidency of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF) in front of the members of the apex institution of French sport.
Thirteen months before the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the co-president of the Gymnastics and Sports Federation of Labor (FSGT), a non-Olympic federation, and the boss of the International Cycling Union (UCI), also a member of the International Committee Olympic Games (IOC), presented in turn their vision of sport and their program for the future of the CNOSF, torn apart for eighteen months by clan wars and struggles for influence which forced Brigitte Henriques to resign, May 25.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers After the resignation of its president, the National Olympic Committee will have to get out of internal conflicts
An elective CNOSF board of directors is to be held on Thursday June 29 to decide which of the two candidates will succeed the former vice-president of the French Football Federation.
Chance of the draw, it was Mr. Lappartient who spoke first. In his office in Sarzeau, the one who is also at the head of Morbihan – among other representation mandates – recalled his attachment to morals and ethics, in particular at the head of the UCI.
Favorite of the June 29 election, he recalled the main lines of his project, broken down into four priorities: the “gathering and unity” of the entire French sports movement; the success of the Paris 2024 Games (sporting success, Club France, post-Olympic legacy); the autonomy of the sports movement vis-à-vis the State and the IOC – “you have to have a strong, embodied voice” –; finally the implementation of his project, in particular the improvement of the governance of the federations and “the development of women’s sport”.
“Reduce sail”
He also specified that he did not wish to be compensated – unlike Ms. Henriques – if he were to be appointed and that he only envisaged his mandate at the head of the CNOSF until 2025.
Asked about the number of his functions – Mr. Lappartient exercises ten political and sporting mandates – he indicated that he was going “reduce the sails significantly on other things”without specifying which ones, “to be able to fulfill the mandate in the event of an election”. “I will devote the time necessary to carry out this mission in the next two. » Le Breton did not have to answer questions about his controversial links, as the investigation of the Monde showed it, with the Russian-Turkmen oligarch Igor Makarov, still influential within the UCI.
Our investigation: Article reserved for our subscribers The troubled links of David Lappartient, heavyweight in the governance of French sport
Emmanuelle Bonnet-Oulaldj she stood out from her rival, presenting herself as the candidate for shared and peaceful governance. “I will be a full-time president”recalling that “The life of the CNOSF will not stop at 2025; we must see further”she said.
Administrator of the Olympic Committee since 2017, the one who had already run for the presidency of the CNOSF in 2021 (16% of the vote) insisted on the crucial role of sports clubs, in particular in the education of young people, too often seen as “consumers” sport.
Newsletter
« Paris 2024 »
“Le Monde” deciphers the news and the challenges of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Register
It calls on the CNOSF to go even further on societal issues, particularly in terms of energy transition – “we must decarbonize our practices”, “associative sport is the solution for sustainable sport” –, access for men and women to sports facilities, the fight against social inequalities in sport and even against sexist and sexual violence. “The CNOSF must be the incubator and catalyst for the sport of tomorrow”she launched as a slogan.