The early days of the National Sports Agency (ANS) in April 2019 did not help it establish its natural authority. What the ANS – “the Agency”, for insiders – was supposed to embody was then not very clear, and if it was viewed with the respect due to its record with French handball, Claude Onesta, in charge of the high performance within it, aroused concern among the federations, anxious to see him put his nose in their business.
Even today, between the ministry in charge of sports, the ANS, the French National Olympic and Sports Committee, the French Paralympic and Sports Committee or the federation presidents, it is difficult to find a single voice to talk about the high level in France. “I quite clearly understood that the ministry had agreed to delegate high performance to the Agency, nevertheless assures Claude Onesta to World. I heard the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic say quite clearly that they entrusted me with the responsibility of this mission and ask everyone to support the action that I am leading and the team that I lead: he me looks like the project is pretty well established. “
His freedom from your bother? Onesta, who very early on hinted at, through his public interventions, the path he was tracing for French sport until the Olympic Games in Paris 2024, assumes: “What’s new moves the lines, and when the lines move, it can shake up previous habits. “
The critics ? Swept with the back of the hand. He says he receives few people complaining about the functioning of the Agency and that, on the contrary, he hears more from the federations thanking him for the additional resources obtained. ” Let’s be clear, does he cut, if the previous sports model, now exhausted, had been efficient, the Agency would never have been created. “
“The Minister has so many other subjects”
A year ago, Onesta presented its “Blue Ambition” plan, laying the foundations for the transformation of the high level towards more elitism. Since then, the authority and the blunt methods of the former strong man of French handball sometimes make him pass for a minister of sports bis. He immediately corrects: “I have had enough with the part that has been entrusted to me to want to look elsewhere. The nature of the supervision is a reality, everything we do must be validated by the ministry and the minister [Roxana Maracineanu]. “
Before specifying: “But it is clear that the ministry’s delegation to the Agency to deal with high performance will put us in a decision-making situation. I also believe that the Minister has so many other subjects on which she must act… ”
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