The president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), Frenchman David Lappartient, speaks to the press during the 2018 UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Innsbruck, Austria, September 29, 2018. REINHARD EISENBAUER / AFP
The suspense was as thin as a ballot. Thursday, June 29, David Lappartient was elected president of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF). Le Breton, member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and boss of the International Cycling Federation (UCI), obtained 80% of the votes of the CNOSF board of directors, ahead of the co-president of the Sports and Gymnastics Federation of Labor Emmanuelle Bonnet -Oulaldj, the only other declared candidate – the result has yet to be confirmed by the CNOSF general assembly on September 13.
Favorite of the ballot, David Lappartient succeeds Brigitte Henriques, elected in June 2021 and who resigned on May 25 after an unprecedented crisis within the apex institution of French sport.
David Lappartient, a boss from the Olympic seraglio
At 50, David Lappartient therefore becomes the tenth president of the French Olympic Committee since Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1894. The former boss of the French Cycling Federation (FFC) had only officially launched the campaign for the head of the CNOSF only on June 16, after securing the support of the most influential member federations. “I stand ready if there is some form of consensus”he had however declared, at the end of May, just after the resignation of Brigitte Henriques, while the candidates were not jostling.
Discreetly supported by the IOC – “He closely follows what is happening in France” – , who took a dim view of the crisis at the CNOSF dragging on, David Lappartient had the advantage of coming from an Olympic federation, unlike his opponent, Emmanuelle Bonnet-Oulaldj, leader of an affinity federation whose political DNA does not fit well with a CNOSF which wants to be apolitical.
A member of the IOC since February 2022 – at the same time as Martin Fourcade – David Lappartient benefits from the political support he has built up throughout a public career that began with the FFC in the 2000s and as mayor of Sarzeau. (Morbihan) from 2008. The one who has also led the departmental council of Morbihan since 2021 and already holds ten political and sports mandates therefore takes on, with the presidency of the CNOSF, a new responsibility. This combination has raised questions about his ability to lead the flagship of French sport. David Lappartient has announced that he will “reduce sail”, “to be able to fulfill [son] mandate ». “I will be a present presidenthe argued Thursday, after his election. Two days a week, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. »
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