bluff, shenanigans and small arrangements – L’Express

In poker, we call it going all-in. Bet it all on one shot. Emmanuel Macron placed Olympic Games at the heart of his five-year term. “The climax of his mandate”, “an event which will place the country at the center of the world for two months”, “the most beautiful Games in history”, “an event worthy of the Universal Exhibition of 1889”, boast his advisors. The risk is calculated, no doubt, but the outcome can only be radical. Consecration or disaster, no half-measures possible. The lights are orange today. Public transport works poorly, private security companies are struggling to recruit, small grains of salt constantly hamper the dynamic, like this wooden tower of scandal in Tahiti. Nothing unusual. Will France succeed in its challenge of making its Olympic Games an unforgettable moment? Story of an event, bigger than a simple sporting competition.

Chapter 1. Luc Besson and the tears of Singapore

Four votes apart. Four little voices, and the course of history could have been different. This July 6, 2005, in Singapore, all those who supported Paris’ candidacy for the organization of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are experiencing a sporting Waterloo. It will not be Paris, but London. The slap, the humiliation, the guilt of having been both too sure of winning and too naive in the face of the British, masters in the martial art of lobbying.

On paper, Paris holds all the cards. A concrete file that sticks to the IOC criteria to the point, and two aborted candidacies. So, when Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC, brandished the small white sheet with London written in capital letters, tears flowed down the cheeks of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, of Arnaud Lagardère, of Jean-François Lamour, the Minister of Youth and Sports, Philippe Baudillon, the director of Paris 2012… Chirac has already left. Whose fault is it ? A project where the politicians would have taken too much of the spotlight, the diktats of Delanoë, the dad-style lobbying of Armand de Rendinger in charge of international relations, the somewhat too self-effacing and not polyglot enough personality of Henri Sérandour, the president of the French Olympic Committee. Not to mention the President of the Republic, who took it a little too lightly, arriving at the last moment, toasting a few glasses of champagne with a handful of IOC members during an endless cocktail party. And this surprising decision, three months before the grand oral in Singapore. “We don’t move an ear anymore,” Delanoë keeps repeating. Above all, don’t be too arrogant. During a meeting on April 23, 2005, one of the committee members dared to ask the taboo question: “Should we buy votes?” De Rendinger responds: “I’m not your man for that, but I don’t know of any city that won without doing it.” Delanoë decides: “We will win fairly.”

Opposite, the English dared everything. Tony Blair present for six days in Singapore with Sebastian Coe, the Olympic champion in charge of the London file. “Hotel room diplomacy,” recalls a Paris town hall official. There is also this film broadcast at the start of the grand oral. Delanoë imposed the filmmaker Luc Besson against the advice of the other members of the Committee, who preferred Jacques Perrin. Besson worked for months, alone in his corner, without revealing anything about the scenario. Two weeks before the final match, a screening is organized in small groups. Disaster. A film that is way too long and pretentious. Lots of clichés about a totally outdated postcard Paris. We discover Catherine Deneuve on the terrace of a café served by the pole vaulter Jean Galfione. A compendium of clichés, right down to the unions marching in the streets. The filmmaker will marginally agree to retouch his film. But in Singapore, during the screening, some IOC members fell asleep. Thousands of kilometers away, Anne Hidalgo, Delanoë’s first deputy, remained in Paris. Champagne, television, thousands of Parisians gathered on the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville to celebrate the event. After the announcement, her throat tight and groggy, she found herself alone in the large deserted village hall of Paris town hall. If by chance she is one day in charge of the city, she vows to never give in to the sirens of the Games.

Chapter 2. Universal Exhibition or Olympic Games? Anne Hidalgo’s hesitation-waltz

This November 6, 2014 on TF1, François Hollande is on the grill. The president is in free fall in the polls, and his promise to reverse the unemployment curve before the end of the five-year term is at best smiling. During the interview, the president declared that he supported Paris’s candidacy for the organization of the 2025 Universal Exhibition. And then, if the capital could also host the Olympic Games in 2024, that would be great… Thousands of kilometers from there, at the French embassy in Kinshasa on the banks of the Congo River, Anne Hidalgo listens absentmindedly to the intervention of the head of state. But she sees red when she hears about the Olympics in Paris. Back in France, she sets the record straight: “Nothing will change my mind, I know the effect it has when a dream is shattered.”

In truth, the idea of ​​a third candidacy for the city has been on his mind for months. However, she did not include it in her program during the spring 2014 municipal elections. Neither did her rival, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. During the women’s tennis final at Roland Garros a year earlier, Denis Masseglia, the president of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee, asked her to think about it. She kicked into touch. One man, the tireless Bernard Lapasset, the president of the International Rugby Board, who gathered around him a small team to think about a possible third candidacy for Paris, pierces the armor. This time, it would be different, he promised her, the figurehead would not be a politician, but a sportsman, like in London: Tony Estanguet, three-time Olympic canoe champion. Beautiful face, a unifying spirit, energy to spare. And the balance within the IOC has changed since the big slap in Singapore.

The fact remains that the new mayor of Paris and her teams are rather favorable to the Universal Exhibition. The young Minister of the Economy, Emmanuel Macron, is on the same line. But, for Hidalgo, there is a big stone in the Exhibition file. Jean-Christophe Fromantin, the mayor of Neuilly, has been leading the project for years, and he is not really inclined to give up his place. Two egos for the same position is one too many. The Charlie Hebdo attacks on January 7, 2005, will precipitate the decision and the conversion of the mayor of Paris to the Olympic dream. “Faced with the tragedy, I discovered a youth who no longer knows where they are and who needs to be made to dream again,” Anne Hidalgo says today. From there, everything remains to be done.

Chapter 3. Los Angeles or Paris? Tony Estanguet’s poker move

This Thursday, February 12, 2015, Tony Estanguet was appointed president of the Paris 2024 bid committee, almost without his knowledge. He stands aside, in a corner of one of the lounges of Paris city hall when Bernard Lapasset, the president of the French international sports committee, announces to journalists that they will form the leading duo of the project . France was looking for a Sebastian Coe, who became the genius president-lobbyist of London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics. It found him, reincarnated in this atypical pair.

Only one real competitor facing them, but a strong one. Los Angeles. In the first months of the battle, a chill ran through the meetings when word rose that the IOC loved the Americans’ presentations. But the French also have assets, the aura of Paris, and these already built facilities which make the French file a more sober candidacy. The Rio Olympics, in August 2016, are the occasion for a first confrontation between the two cities at the IOC. The universality of English gives an advantage to the Angelians, who do not mind spreading the rumor that the French capital is no longer a safe city since the attacks. “Should we recall the number of deaths by firearms in the United States?” Anne Hidalgo retorted to Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, in one of their first exchanges, in Brazil. The race for the Games is a boxing match, each contact is an opportunity to mark your opponent.

The French erred out of naivety against the British in 2005, this time they will show their muscle. At the Sport Accord convention, the association of international federations, from April 4 to 7, 2017 in Aarhus, Denmark, they prove that they are no longer the candids of Singapore. One morning, the IOC members discovered at their breakfast table a special issue of the New York Times, the over-coverage of which was entirely purchased… by Paris 2024. An idea from lobbyist Mike Lee, recruited by Bernard Lapasset’s teams . At the same time, RTL revealed that Los Angeles 2024 would have purchased numerous “followers” ​​on social networks, in order to artificially increase its Facebook account from 200,000 “followers” ​​to more than a million. Tension at its height in both teams, we stare at each other in the corridors.

Since Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, publicly spoke out for the two cities to share the 2024 and 2028 Olympics, each camp has been trying to push the other to give up. In a small, soulless office in the Aarhus complex, Anne Hidalgo tells Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles: “If you don’t accept 2028, we will go to the vote and we will beat you.” Los Angeles is on the ropes.

In Lausanne, from July 9 to 12, 2017, Paris places the decisive uppercut. The IOC meeting consists of a technical presentation of the candidate projects. The logistics, the constructions… Tony Estanguet has the intuition that it must be made into an event. President Macron and his wife Brigitte will come to Switzerland. Their movement is organized discreetly so as not to attract the attention of the Angelians. Their presence can only reassure the IOC: it signifies the commitment of the State at its highest level. The presidential couple leaves nothing to chance. Emmanuel Macron has the CV and personality of each member of the IOC detailed one after the other. As for Brigitte Macron, she increases the number of meetings with female members of the organization. When the day comes, the Head of State ends his speech with a sentence repeated three times: “We will deliver we will deliver, we will deliver”. We will deliver the Games, on time.

Tony Estanguet decides on an ultra-personal speech. He talks about his family, how he had to shatter the Olympic dream of his brother Patrice, bronze medalist in canoeing in Atlanta, to carve out a destiny for himself. Then how Patrice became his coach, after his failure in Beijing, to enable him to become Olympic champion again in London, in 2012. A story of surpassing oneself, tenacity and altruism. The values ​​of Olympism in gold plating. The IOC is won over. There remains the knockout blow, Anne Hidalgo takes care of it. She provokes a tête-à-tête in the hall with Eric Garcetti. Implicit ultimatum: 2028, do you take it or don’t you take it?” The mayor of Los Angeles finally gave in: “Ok but I want it to be seen as a victory for both cities.” Deal. The two mayors walk down the aisles of the IOC conference room hand in hand. Everyone understood. The official designation, in Lima, Peru, is only a formality, even if Tony Estanguet insisted that no one let up in their efforts. The rigor of the champion. It is in Latin America that the French delegation treats itself to a nouba until the end of the night. The demons of Singapore are finally exorcised.