“And then, you know, we could do like when we have friends over and just vacuum the place once to pretend that everything is clean. I want us to take all the furniture out to take everything out and start over.” When he uttered this household metaphor intended to galvanize his listeners – mountain mayors of Savoie – Michel Barnier was 35 years old and had a blond parting on the side. Elected as the youngest member of the National Assembly in the 1978 legislative elections, the brand new – and once again – youngest head of the departmental council at the time was leading a crazy enterprise: organizing the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, a population of 17,000. In fact, as promised, he was going to remove the furniture to install new furniture, providing the department with seven train stations, ten sewage treatment plants and a host of road infrastructures. The success that he likes to reawaken – and flatter – the memory of, exposing it in his books, citing it in the corridors of Brussels, has always inhabited him.
Since he was tasked, at the end of an interminable and steep slalom, with forming a government, he has been exhuming the great hours of Albertville to the rhythm of the snow cannon. In bursts. On September 5, on the steps of Matignon, a few tackles to his predecessor, a quick tribute to his wife, and here he is recalling having devoted “ten years of his life to organizing the Olympic Games”. The next day, 8 p.m. on TF1, the same pattern: two biographical details and already the radiant snowflakes appear on the set. The constant reference is intriguing on the part of a leader who, over the past forty years, has been around a lot, displaying five ministerial posts and two mandates as European Commissioner.
Why this fixation? First explanation, easy, Albertville signals the age of its author, inducing his experience, his wisdom. Let us remember that the politician flatters himself, as he confided in 2016 during a conference at the Sèvres center, to have bought on this occasion a “screen word processing system”, while the volunteers of the Savoyard Games wore gloves lined with asbestos and that it was the football midfielder Michel Platini who lit the cauldron. It dates. However, the obsession with “his” Olympic Games is too invasive to be summed up in a glorious line on his CV. If he talks about it so much, it is because Albertville operates as a talisman, a “Rosebud”, a powerful memory whose company he seeks to reassure himself. To cite Albertville is to convince oneself that he knows how to face extreme conditions, to triumph over belligerent adversity.
Because if the 1992 Games were a success, they were first a terrible course of pitfalls for ten years. The story is at its birth that of a gigantic nerve. December 1981, seated in front of a raclette in Val d’Isère in the company of the skier and triple Olympic champion Jean-Claude Killy, the idea arises, two years later, the two friends announce it. In Chambéry, prefecture of Savoie, the socialist mayor Louis Besson chokes at the blow of his fourteen-year junior, but he puts himself, cleverly, at his service. Around Michel Barnier, a tiny team: Jean-Claude Killy, therefore, a popular and luminous figure, the prefect François Lépine, Rémy Charmetant, general manager, and Armand de Rendinger, in charge of communication. The commando boards, works, works hard, but never dines or has fun together. Moreover, in these early days, the five men did not share the same office. After six rounds of voting, in October 1986, the commune of Savoie was officially designated. This choice consecrates five first years of work, the halfway point. The day Albertville is chosen, Michel Barnier is certainly satisfied, he smiles, he shares a few warm words, then everyone goes home. No champagne. The second half of the project proves dry.
“Fixed in twenty minutes with Killy, in three hours with Barnier”
After the promises intended to gain the collective support of the municipalities of the two valleys, the Tarentaise and the Beaufortain, it was urgent to deal with a budget of 3 billion euros, eliminate sites, shorten distances. January 1987, Jean-Claude Killy announced that Les Ménuires would not have the women’s downhill events or the super giant, Tignes would have to make do with artistic skiing (exit the giant and the men’s slalom). The snowy slopes rumbled, Pralognan refused to pay into the pot for its curling rink, it was the booing. Behind the elected officials of Les Ménuires and Tignes, the mayors joined forces, demonstrated, they surrounded the prefecture while sounding cowbells. Jean-Claude Killy, co-president of the Olympic Games Organizing Committee with Michel Barnier, had a hard time resisting the loss of love. He slammed the door. The departure of the darling of French Olympism, headliner of the Savoy Olympics, pampered by the IOC, is harsh. But Michel Barnier does not say a word. He clenches his jaw, impassive. Never will his team, in the meantime much larger, hear him utter an annoyed word about the resigning champion. A few circumstantial phrases, expressed in a taciturn tone to the local press, then the “great one”, as the inhabitants of the department nickname him, continues his work, deaf to concerns. It was a good thing he did.
A year later, Jean-Claude Killy returned. And here again Barnier refrained from triumphing, he kept quiet. As a result, the project accelerated. The duo complemented each other. “What you resolved in twenty minutes with Killy, you deal with in three hours with Barnier,” recalls a former employee. On the medal-winning skier’s side, it was brilliance, intuition, and ego. And on the cautious politician’s side, it was prudence, slowness – and ego. Weighing each choice, Michel Barnier worked with scrupulousness, always in control, concerned about his image, capable of changing his mind provided that it was done gently: “The duration of a file matters little to him, he only thinks about the result,” adds another witness. He does not get carried away, does not get heated, does not scatter, he climbs, methodical and austere. After the Games, the president of the departmental council did not gather his team for dinner, he still did not open the champagne, and since then, three decades have passed, he has never organized a reunion to share these victories. He alone cherishes this memory. “Succeeding in bringing the Olympic Games to a successful conclusion between valleys, all rivals, each thinking only of its own advantage, alongside a radiant and self-conscious star like Killy, that was quite a feat,” a former top collaborator considers today, in a mocking parallel.
On the Vinted platform, the full-body suit, similar to the one that dressed Michel Barnier on the evening of the opening ceremony, sells for between 650 and 1020 euros. The price varies depending on the number of snags. This fall, associating the rival valleys under the gaze of a narcissistic star should cause a few snags.
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