Three-time Olympic canoeing champion Tony Estanguet has slipped into the role of boss of the Paris Games over the years, learning to navigate between the world of sport from which he comes and that of politics of which he is wary.
” I was told: “You speak English and you know quite a few athletes.” “, laughs the champion when asked about the path that led him to the presidency of the Paris 2024 organizing committee.
Once he had packed up his paddles after his last gold medal in London in 2012, the Pau native first joined the athletes’ commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
A logical continuation for this athlete brought up on the Olympic Games who recounts that during the Seoul Games in 1988, at barely ten years old, he ” got up at night to watch Carl Lewis » before having “the spark” at the Barcelona Games in 1992 where one of his brothers, Patrice, was “opener” of the course.
His brother, in fact, won a bronze medal in Atlanta in 1996, also in canoeing. In our family, we didn’t know anyone who had done the Games. There, my brother, he did it, that means it’s possible, from that moment on, I said to myself: This is my goal, I want to go to the Games ” he tells AFP.
Family transgression
Then we must add a founding transgression, in this family where canoeing is practiced from father to son, since he beat Patrice to qualify for the Sydney Olympics in 2000. An exceptional career followed: three times gold (2000, 2004 and 2012) and only one “first big failure”, in 2008, at 30 years old in Beijing.
After teaching sports and marketing at Essec, he played a leading role in Paris’s bid, alongside the former head of French rugby Bernard Lapasset, who died in 2023, who pushed him to the forefront. He then naturally took over as head of the organizing committee.
“ He has a weakness towards politics “, experienced in behind-the-scenes negotiations and well-aimed public pecks, explains a former MP. However, with the Olympic Games approaching, ” he entered the role of president of the Cojo “, judges an elected official who worked with him regularly.
If the President of the Republic “protects” him, several elected officials believe, his relations with other political crocodiles, such as the socialist mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, are not “ not always easy ” says one of them.
His schedule resembles that of a Prime Minister and he is at Joe Biden’s table when the American president dines under the gilded ceilings of the Republic.
Still. If he has tamed them, he is still wary of them. He doesn’t have an election, he wants the Games to move forward. “, his close advisor Michaël Aloïsio sometimes says. I understood that I had to stay in my place “, replies Tony Estanguet when pushed onto the political terrain. He would like elected officials to come and play less on his.
“Cold-blooded animal”
Behind his appearance of the ideal son-in-law, ” He is a cold-blooded animal who knows where he wants to go and does not give in to pressure. “, explains a former elected official in charge of the Olympic Games. Does the definition suit him? ” We must not overreact, it’s true that I try not to get carried away “, the Paris 2024 boss replied to AFP.
At 46, this chief salesman of the Olympic Games carries his enthusiasm and his “cool”, “fantastic”, “magical”, “iconic”, on all the grounds, the sneakers of sponsors on his feet. He relegates the critics to the category of ” pessimists and complainers “, as he recently explained to AFP. “ My role is to preserve the project ” he snaps, sometimes at the risk of appearing to live in a parallel universe.
Between Covid, inflation, the surprise search at the headquarters of the Cojo and the investigations opened by the public prosecutor, including one on the conditions of his remuneration, he sometimes had to row against the current. Then absorb the political crisis opened in France by the dissolution of the National Assembly.
” Adapting can be very stressful for some people. Not being in control, not being able to master it, I grew up with it, having to prepare myself and on the big day not knowing what kind of water movement I’m going to have. “, he deciphers.
Three days before the opening of the Olympic Games, he concedes ” a good level of stress “. And then? First a “vacation” then ” return to a more normal life “. ” What I have been living for ten years is not a normal life. “, says this father of three children.