How far will the fall go? Since she climbed her Mount Olympus at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, with six medals – a total unseen since 1948 – the French Athletics Federation (FFA) has fallen from Charybdis to Scylla. After the 2019 world championships in Doha, punctuated by two medals and extrasport incidents, the discipline only brought home one medal from the Tokyo Olympics. Three years before the Paris Games, this tumble has cause for concern, while the President of the Republic himself urged, in mid-September, all French sportswomen and sportswomen to “Do a lot more” on the occasion of this high mass at home.
For athletics, the diagnosis is all the more alarming as the disease seems deep. This results crisis is coupled with another, less visible to the general public: that of the governance of the federation. In six months, the FFA saw two national technical directors (DTN) leave, as well as its director of high performance – the former multi-medalist in track cycling Florian Rousseau -, the day after the Tokyo Games and only a year and a half after his induction.
The Ministry of Sports and the National Sports Agency (ANS), a public establishment created in 2019 and responsible in particular for the high level, have decided to take the case head on. If he refutes a “Placing under guardianship” of the federation, Claude Onesta, the boss of high performance within the ANS, does not hide, however, that there is need and urgency at a ” accompaniement “.
“Sense of permanent interference”
For several weeks, the Agency and the ministry have been in conflict with the president of the FFA, André Giraud. The object of the tensions? The choice of the new DTN, theoretically the boss of the sports component within a federation. However, it is on this subject that tensions have crystallized for months: who, at the FFA, embodies, defines and leads sports policy?
Patrice Gergès considers that the cards have been confused with the appointment, in January 2019, of the current director general, Souad Rochdi. “What I experienced above all was the feeling of permanent interference”, advance to World the one who had been appointed DTN in April 2017, a few months after the election of André Giraud, and had worked with two first general managers. “With them, we had regular meetings in the presence of the president. With this GM, they disappeared and I discovered after the fact changes of course ”, explains Patrice Gergès.
The situation became tense during the Doha Worlds in autumn 2019, marked by a sporting shipwreck, but also rumors of doping, the departure of the federal doctor in full competition or an incongruous hypnosis session at the hotel des Blues. “I assigned employees of the federation during the competition, for example to support the athletes in front of the media. However, behind my back, they were forbidden to carry out these missions, says Patrice Gergès. It creates dysfunctions. ” Solicited, Souad Rochdi refused to speak.
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