Paris 2024 Olympics: French plan to allow coaches to ‘grab medals’

To create a “Collective momentum »while doing “ hand stitched”. During three days, from November 22 to November 24, the National Sports Agency (NSA) promoted “Planning Coaches”, at a workshop held near Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhone). This unprecedented program was born a few months ago from the desire of the high-level head of the ANS, Claude Onesta, to give the coaches of the Bleues et Bleus a key role and responsibility in the medal race at the Olympic Games. Paralympics (JOP) 2024.

“Our athletes in Paris will be the same as in Tokyo in 2021. Until then, we will not change the training methods, which are quite effective. So you need to work on the ability to win. This plan works on something that has never been considered: coaches. We want to support them, appreciate them and accompany them to return to more ambitious positions.”The former coach of the national handball team, gray mania and rocky voice, and now the defender of the success of the French in “their” games, are posing.

At the end of November in Aix, at the second seminar of the “Coaching Plan” dedicated to the Summer Games, a hundred of them are present. French women’s football team coach Corinne Deacon talks to Olivier Krumbholz, her handball counterpart. Fencer Eric Schreck jokes with handball player Guillaume Gilles.

Other faces are less well-known: faces of sports that receive little media coverage, such as rowing, shooting or BMX, or Paralympic coaches. Everyone was invited because they care about the athletes who could bring a medal. “ This is the first time that we were considered as able-bodied coaches.”notes Sylvie Talmant, Paralympic athletics coach.

Ninety medals “in hand”

The “Coaches Plan” aims to control everything that can weaken coaches with very heterogeneous financial and legal situations. Additional salary, specific medal bonus up to €35,000… ANS also implements solutions for those who are too far from national training centers. Seventeen regional performance houses have been established and a network has been established with professional clubs who are invited to make their facilities and medical staff available to Olympic coaches.

The plan is part of the ‘Blue Ambition’ strategy, which aims to make Paris 2024 the pinnacle of medals after the disappointment of Tokyo and its thirty-three podiums (including ten golds). The goal is a priority at the highest level of the state. On Thursday 24 November, the Minister of Sport and JOP, Amelie Oudea-Castera, was in Aix for the last morning of the workshop.