French sport has been plunged into crisis

The head of the French Olympic Committee has resigned just over a year out from the Games’ opening in Paris. Brigitte Henriques announced her decision at the Games’ committee’s general assembly, the result according to the French media of ‘a year-and-a-half of internal squabbling.’

There was much fanfare when Henriques was nominated to the role in June 2021, winning 58 per cent of the vote to triumph over her nearest rival, the former Judo Olympic champion Thierry Rey. The then 50-year-old Henriques was lauded as the first female president of the French Olympic committee, the culmination of a career that had included a stint as the vice-president of the French Football Federation. ‘I want to dedicate this victory to all women, particularly my daughters,’ she said. 

Two years later she is out, worn down, according to reports, by petty rivalries and internal disputes. Her principal adversary is allegedly her predecessor Denis Masseglia, with whom she ‘has been at war’ for many months. Last September Henriques’ number two, Didier Seminet, was forced out of the Committee. Henriques was so upset at his removal that she took a leave of absence at the end of the year for several weeks; on her return the atmosphere had not changed and so she made her decision.

According to Le Figaro, Henriques’ resignation leaves the Olympic Committee ‘in the midst of an unprecedented crisis, with threats of legal action, low blows and revelations of email exchanges in the press.’

It’s not the first crisis to afflict French sports administration in recent months. In January the president of the French rugby federation, Bernard Laporte, resigned after a court found him guilty of corruption. The charismatic Laporte had been instrumental in securing the 2023 Rugby World Cup for France – triumphing over South Africa in what the Guardian called a ‘shock’ secret vote in 2017. 

Three months before Laporte’s resignation, the chief executive of the 2023 World Cup, Claude Atcher, was fired after the French sports paper, L’Equipe, published an exposé of his management style, accusing him of creating a ‘climate of terror’ within the organising committee.  

In February this year it was the turn of Noel Le Graet, the 81-year-old president of the French Football Federation, to lose his rank. He resigned after alleged sexual harassment and harassment, accusations that Le Graet denies. 

Throw in the sacking of the female coach of the French women’s football team after a player revolt, plus the suspended prison sentence handed down this month to the former technical director of the France gymnastics centre for ‘moral harassment’, and it adds up to a turbulent few months in French sport.

So much for the Olympic motto of ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together’.