David Lappartient was elected president of the CNOSF on Thursday June 29, in Paris. He will succeed Brigitte Henriques, who resigned on May 25. STEFANO RELLANDINI / AFP
Is this the end of the psychodrama at the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF)? The election in an armchair of David Lappartient, Thursday, June 29, at the head of the venerable institution could close a year of crisis which will have shown to the eyes of the whole world during a dismaying farce in which French sport could excel: the low blows and clan wars.
The gun barrels are still smoking on the flagship of French sport, but the boss of the International Cycling Federation and member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) appears, for many, cut out for the role of peacemaker. “You have to bring credibility, serenity. He’s the most suitable person.”says so of him, in The team, Jean-Christophe Rolland, the president of the International Rowing Federation, who is his colleague at the IOC.
“Gathering and unity will be the key words of my action”insisted David Lappartient, Thursday, upon his election, aware that the CNOSF is taking on water one year from the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This is also what the IOC has been saying to itself in recent months, which has not not hesitate to let him know, in a barely muffled call to order.
From now on, Thomas Bach can sleep soundly. With a member of the IOC at the head of the CNOSF, it has a direct transmission belt. Especially since David Lappartient is a good student. In the small world of French sports leaders, praise rains down on the Breton, who to praise his ability to listen, who to highlight his experience or his ability to work – ” extraordinary “according to Jean-Christophe Rolland.
A textbook case for the national ethics committee
Mr. Lappartient has good interpersonal skills, enjoys strong political support established in 2008 from his stronghold of Sarzeau, in Morbihan. At the head of a weighty Olympic federation, that of cycling, he also boasts of not having “never deviated from morals and ethics”. Is he the man for the job?
His election could be a textbook case for the National Ethics Committee – led by Marie-George Buffet and Stéphane Diagana – that the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, created in the spring to clean up French sport.
Because the relations of the new boss of the CNOSF with the Russian-Turkmen oligarch Igor Makarov, revealed by The world, allow at the very least to wonder. Could this link pose a problem the day when the question of the presence of Russian and Belarusian athletes – and consequently that of Ukrainian athletes – will have to be decided?
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