Double Olympic judo champion, Clarisse Agbégnénou should not be standard bearer of the French delegation at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The French National Olympic and Sports Committee has established new selection criteria which will make her candidacy impossible since an athlete cannot be designated if he has already been chosen to march at the head of the tricolor procession. However, Agbégnénou carried the flag in Tokyo in 2021…
Clarisse Agbégnénou, however, appears prominently among the athletes chosen by the French to benefit from this award. With 8% of the votes in a poll revealed Tuesday by L’internaute, she is in 5th position among the favorites behind Teddy Riner, in the lead (27%), followed by Kylian Mbappé (19th) and Antoine Dupont (16th). Three headliners who will not be able to be elected either since the first paraded with the flag in Rio in 2016 and the two others appear for the first time at the Olympic Games (the flag bearer must have already competed in the Olympic Games in revealed Le Parisien).
Clarisse Agbégnénou seems to regret the establishment of these criteria which put her out of the game even before the athletes’ vote (it is the members of the delegation who choose their representative submitted by the federations). “Outstanding! This survey is timely. There are the French and the figures who express a certain will and on the other side people work behind the scenes to impose discriminatory conditions to designate the flag bearers,” quipped the judokate born in Rennes on her Twitter account.