It seems a long time ago when Usain Bolt electrified the Stade de France track. The brilliant Jamaican, now retired, alone attracted 10,000 spectators which, at the rate of 30 euros per ticket, guaranteed him a stamp of 300,000 euros, a white operation for the organizers. Saturday, in Charléty, the “stars” will be the Jamaican sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and the American hurdler Devon Allen, 12′’84 last weekend. It’s less glamorous than Bolt, but one month from the Eugene Worlds (United States), the show promises to be spectacular.
The essential René Auguin, agent for many French athletes, has concocted a tailor-made set. With the means at hand. Because even stamped “Diamond League” – the top -, the meeting, organized by the French Athletics Federation, did not escape the crisis. The budget, kept secret, has been revised downwards. “Athletes’ requirements as well”, specifies René Auguin.
If some stars are entitled to a special stamp, all have in mind the “prize money”, identical for all events (around 10,000 dollars to the winner, before tax deducted at source). The travel and hotel expenses are borne by the organizer and René Auguin multiplies the exchanges with the agents to convince the foreign athletes to put down, for a weekend, their suitcases in the capital.
Not always with success, especially as the calendar is busy – “due to national selections (where everyone plays their ticket for Eugene), there are practically no Jamaicans and Americans in Europe”, specifies the agent – and that the competition between the meetings is fierce. Saturday will thus take place the Madrid meeting, less rated than that of Paris but which complicates the task of the organizers if it is necessary to fill a corridor in the event of withdrawal of an athlete. An Australian hurdler, however, canceled her presence in Spain, the Charléty meeting having offered her, this Friday morning, a place in the 100m hurdles. “Until the day before, or even the same day, we can offer an athlete to come because of a last-minute package,” underlines René Auguin.
A trial run before the 2024 Olympics
The latter, however, failed to convince pole vault star Armand Duplantis to come and face Renaud Lavillenie. “He was in Oslo on Thursday and did not want to chain two competitions, he is Swedish and favored Scandinavia”, specifies the agent who, as at the time of Bolt, did not bet on a big star but rather on balance between challenges. “Which also makes it possible to leave room for the French,” he notes.
The Tricolores will be about forty out of the 170 athletes. “We want our athletes, especially the youngest, to get tougher on the two-year meeting of the Olympic Games in Paris, explains Romain Barras, the performance director. Running in France, in front of your public and your family, generates a certain pressure, and you can learn that. So, we exchange with the organization so that places are reserved for the French, knowing very well that the field must remain raised and that we cannot therefore take the place of the best foreigners. »
It is also to prepare for the Games at home that the hammer competitions have been added to the program, in particular to allow Alexandra Tavernier and Quentin Bigot, potentially medal winners in 2024, to compete in Paris.