Four windsurf sails are drying in the hangar. Next to it, an athlete from the French team is busy with the fittings of her 470. Further away, waiting, in their gray covers, are two 49ers – ultra-fast dinghies, which became an Olympic discipline in 2000 in Sydney. Upstairs in the Marseille Olympic Sailing Center building, six young people occupy the seats in the “herbal tea room” with a view of the Frioul islands. On the walls, photos of the champions who will make up the French team. They are the first to use the new Olympic marina, specially built and fitted out on the former Roucas-Blanc nautical base for the Paris 2024 events.
The inauguration of the site will take place on Tuesday April 2, opening the countdown to the arrival of the Olympic flame aboard the three-masted ship Belem, at the Old Port of Marseille, on May 8. The final development work ends on Wednesday March 27, and if we can still see protective grilles and some construction equipment, the place is ready.
The marina of some 7,000 m2 was carried out around a redeveloped body of water and over 17,000 m2 of launching land, storage and parking. The set of brushed white concrete, lightened by large glass roofs and pillars, is made up of four buildings with an elegant and sober look: two of them will house the city’s technical workshops and associations linked to nautical practices and the protection of the diversity.
The municipal sailing center is located in the center of the arc formed by the buildings with its classrooms bearing the names of winds (sirocco, tramontane, levant), its reception area, its changing rooms and its lockers. Just before the French Sailing Federation (FFV) pole, a huge boat shed boasts high ceilings allowing sailboats to be stored there without having to dismast. “The marina is a unique tool that will allow you to train in great comfort during and after the Games”, enthuses Mathilde Mermod, in charge of communications for the FFV. The training center can accommodate up to 180 athletes.
The installation will have cost 49.2 million euros, including 31 million for the maritime works. It was necessary to dig up the body of water, evacuate tons of polluted silt to make it navigable again and create a current allowing the fauna to return. “We will have two stadiums in Marseille, the velodrome and the marina. We want to make the sea, this long-forgotten natural element, an element of pride as much as football”, assures Hervé Menchon, deputy for the sea at Marseille town hall. The elected official (Europe Ecologie-Les Verts) intends to present the new marina as an ecological emblem of the city.
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