Paris (AFP)

Not yet definitively decided, the site map of the events of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024 still gives rise to some battles, between sports and territorial issues.

Except for the additional sports (surfing, breakdancing, skateboarding, climbing) that came later in the game, the latest atlas of the Paris-2024 competitions, with its two poles in the heart of Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis, dates back to a year, during a presentation of the boss of the organizing committee (Cojo), Tony Estanguet, before the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The surf attracts greed, with five applications: three in the south-west (Hossegor-Seignosse-Capbreton, Biarritz, Lacanau), one in Brittany (La Torche, Finistere) and the Polynesian island of Tahiti.

For the rest, nothing has moved, which does not prevent lobbying with the Cojo.

Thus, the French firing federation, supported by the international federation, has advanced an alternative project for its events to take place in the Val d'Oise, Saint-Witz, a few kilometers north of Roissy-Charles airport. Gaulle, rather than La Courneuve, in Seine-Saint-Denis, in one of the strongholds of the future Olympics, the "media cluster". This area, which includes Le Bourget, should also host volleyball, the media center and the new neighborhood where journalists will be housed.

"The current project is an ephemeral site that leaves no legacy, while we need locations to practice shooting in Ile-de-France," pleads Philippe Crochard, president of the FFTir, which claims 226,000 licensees in France, including 29,000 in the Paris region. "Our interest is Saint-Witz", where a club Roissy, forced to move, must settle.

- financing -

The Cojo has agreed to study this file and should decide quickly. Problem, in the first case, for temporary installations, it is the Cojo, financed by private funds (sponsors, ticketing, CIO) who pays. In the second, it would be necessary for public actors, state or local authorities, to release the checkbook to finance the long-term part of the site.

This funding problem could derail the project, according to several actors associated with the Olympics. Another question raised was the fate of the ground initially planned for fire, a former oil depot of the army that the state undertook to clean up.

But if the solution was retained, "it would be interesting to associate another department of the Paris region to host events," the Val d'Oise, slips a public actor, under the guise of anonymity.

At the expense of Seine-Saint-Denis? The "media cluster", "it's a second pole of the Olympics for the Seine-Saint-Denis (after that of the Olympic Village and the Stade de France), it's a whole", warns the president of the department, Stéphane Troussel.

"Two events is a minimum," he adds. Which ones? "Two events", insists Stéphane Troussel, whose territory will benefit from the biggest infrastructures of the Games, and, level tests, will be the best equipped with Paris, by welcoming among others athletics and swimming.

The youngest department in France would add one of the new urban sports or disciplines of the Olympic program. There are five left to wear: breakdance, skateboard, climbing, BMX Freestyle and basketball 3x3. For these, Paris-2024 has set its sights on the Place de la Concorde, likely to offer broadcasters pictures licked for spectacular sports. But space would not allow all to integrate, hence the hypothesis of locating one, or two, elsewhere.

Further from Paris, some have lent to Chamonix ambitions to host climbing events, 100 years after the Winter Games of 1924 (those summer had been held in Paris). "Many things are said but nothing is recorded," answers AFP Marie-Noelle Fleury, Vice President of the Chamonix Valley Mont-Blanc, responsible for sports, confirming a desire "to celebrate with dignity" l 'anniversary.

The final map of Paris-2024 must be stopped at the end of 2020, after the Tokyo Olympics. This one will be final.

© 2019 AFP