The old-fashioned cube in the middle of the city is full of the sound of water on this Wednesday morning in April and during the school holidays. Two groups of children aged 6 to 12 occupy the 25-meter pool of the Busserine swimming pool. On the edge, the five supervisors of the Le Grand Bleu association monitor and encourage the forty kids.
Outside, a group of mothers wait. Few seem aware of the arrival of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Marseille. One of them, however, remembers that her eldest, who is learning sailing at the Corbières municipal base, a few kilometers further down, will welcome the flame with his friends on Wednesday May 8. A group of boys and girls in kayaks, canoes and paddles will in fact be stationed at the end of the Estaque pier to greet the arrival of the Belem with the Olympic torch on board.
Brahim Timricht, director of the Le Grand Bleu association, which organizes the “Knowing how to swim” course for these young people sent by social centers, is very proud that his structure was selected to participate in the festivities. “When’s the next time it’s going to happen to us?” We will be dead! » This tall, 50-year-old man recognizes that parents and children rarely talk about the Olympics : “They think everything happens in the south [de la ville] and that their neighborhood is not impacted. » He knows that the Games still seem far away, in this corner of the 14e borough. As in all other sectors of the northern districts of the Marseille city.
A distant echo
3 kilometers away, in the 13e arrondissement, on the edge of the Chutes-Lavie district, the Burel FC stadium stands above the four-lane ring road which crosses the north of the city. The Olympics? Here too, it is a distant echo. “For us, it is above all the Paris Games. In Marseille, we’re going to have sailing, it’s nice, but it’s a confidential sport that we don’t understand anything about.”remarks Serge Obré, director of the club.
The sports manager assures that his players do not even talk about the matches which will take place at the Vélodrome: “For them, there is only one king sport, it is football, and they know that it is a minor discipline in the Olympics. They have more in mind the European Championship. »
Far north, at the Sound Musical School in Savine, there is the same disillusionment as the world meeting approaches. “You have to be in certain clubs to have information on what is going to happen. We don’t even know if there is a Marseille athlete who will compete in the sailing events…”says Mohamed MBaé, known as “Soly”, cultural and social mediator. “We don’t see anything concrete except the marina”, adds Ali Ibrahima. The two managers of the music studio, which has seen all the Marseille rappers pass through, point out that sailing means nothing to the kids of this poor city. Here any sporting activity has become a luxury. To get to the Corbières nautical base, the journey takes an hour and a half by public transport. The large Savine stadium, the only existing facility, has been abandoned since the demolition of the city’s towers, and to play football or go to the swimming pool, you have to take two buses.
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