The scene takes place on Tuesday during the inauguration of the AB Campus, the training center of Aviron Bayonnais. As they pass the crampon room, club president Philippe Tayeb and president of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques Department Council Jean-Jacques Lasserre engage in a rather surreal conversation, reported by the general information website Mediabask. “These cleats are very cleanfirst observes the elected official of the department. You should show my wife how to clean shoes. »
“The project is called AB Etxea, replies the boss of Rowing. Etxea means house in Basque. And from what I’ve always been told, in the Basque Country, the women stay in the kitchen. »
“It’s something that doesn’t look like me”
This sexist exchange obviously did not go unnoticed. So much so that Philippe Tayeb apologized on Thursday at the microphone of France Bleu Pays basque. “It’s something that doesn’t look like me, he explains in particular. It’s something that was said to me by a nice young lady during the Hasparren parties and I took up this expression. »
The president of Rowing then recalled that his board of directors was made up “seven girls for four boys” and that his mother had worked for thirty-five years in the kitchen of their family restaurant.
“If there is one person who is important in the Tayeb family, it is the mother, he said. In our community or our family environment, it has always been the mother who was above everyone. So when I said that… I’m sorry if that offended […]. But afterwards, these are comments that were made and I accept them. »