The former president of the French Rugby Federation Bernard Lapasset is dead

2023-05-03 08:21:00

Bernard Lapasset had been at the head of the FFR between 1991 and 2008. More recently, he had led Paris’s bid for the 2024 Olympics.

Source AFP

Bernard Lapasset had also held the position of president of World Rugby.
© FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP

Published on 03/05/2023 at 08:21

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L’former president of the French Rugby Federation Bernard Lapasset died Tuesday evening around 10 p.m., the FFR told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday April 3. Lapasset, also president of the International Rugby Federation and of Paris’ bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, was 75.

Craftsman of the professionalization of rugby, then of the successful candidacy for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, he maneuvered with skill in national and international sports bodies for forty years. In the aftermath of yet another bitter failure of a French Olympic candidacy in July 2011 – that of Annecy for the 2018 Winter Olympics – it is almost natural that all eyes turn to this affable former second line, boss of the diplomatic unit of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF) to ward off fate.

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Who better than the one who was then president of the International Rugby Federation (IRB which has since become World Rugby), a fine connoisseur of sports bodies and who has already convinced the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to integrate rugby sevens into the program of the Olympic Games from 2016, to bring Olympism back to France?

The imposing Tarbais, from the height of his 1.91 m, combines the experience of high authorities and his knowledge of athletes. He first succeeded in convincing politicians, including the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, to embark on a new campaign after those failed for the 1992, 2008 and 2012 Olympics, but also to keep a low profile to leave athletes at the center. movement. “Even President Hollande has agreed to step behind them,” he rejoiced at the end of 2016 in an interview with AFP.

More active behind the scenes than in the media

In the couple he quickly formed with Tony Estanguet, it was the triple Olympic champion who took center stage.

Bernard Lapasset is more active behind the scenes, he who has almost never lost an election. His sporting past, on the other hand, is modest: his main feat of arms was a title of French junior rugby champion in 1967, with SU Agen. It was also in Agen that he met Albert Ferrasse, the president of the club who would reign over the French Rugby Federation for 23 years from 1968. Three years after his arrival at the head of the FFR, Ferrasse le takes under his wing. First responsible for preparing the communication of its president, Lapasset became deputy general secretary of the Federation in 1984, and general secretary in 1991, just before Ferrasse retired.

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The transition to professionalism

Lapasset emerges victorious from the struggle for the succession and manages to maintain himself in the first complicated years, marked by several cases questioning the mismanagement of the Federation. World and French rugby is then at the dawn of the great transition towards professionalization.

President of the IRB in 1995 – the position rotated at the time between the representatives of the eight historic nations of rugby – he negotiated the end of the reference to amateurism in the statutes to decree rugby “open”, the word “ professionalism” is still taboo.

The change gradually applied in France and a professional league was created in 1998. Rugby entered a new dimension: in 1998, a player in the French championship earned on average barely more than the minimum wage at the time, around 1 100 monthly euros today taking inflation into account. Twenty years later, the net salary has risen to around 15,000 euros per month.READ ALSO Rugby: professionalization, the French in the middle of the ford

A deeply Pyrenean man

Like his mentor, Bernard Lapasset will make his time at the head of the FFR last, with the organization of the 2007 World Cup as the high point. When he left in 2008, it was for the IRB, where he was elected a few months earlier. Narrowly re-elected four years later, he focuses his policy on the globalization of rugby, opening the body to emerging countries, with the awarding of the 2019 World Cup to Japan and the integration of Argentina into the Tri-Nations, today named Rugby Championship, of the southern hemisphere.

After two terms, he leaves his chair at the International Federation and devotes himself fully to the French candidacy for the Olympic Games. And wins the fight, once again, before becoming honorary president of the organizing committee. This senior customs official, married and father of three children, was also very attached to his Pyrenean land, where he never ceased to recharge his batteries between mountain walking and involvement in the town of Louit (Hautes-Pyrénées).