During the end-of-year holidays, the sports editorial team of Le Figaro brings you a series on the personalities who have annoyed in 2023. For various and varied reasons. Today, Steven Da Costa, deprived of the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Obviously, you will have understood, the annoyance mentioned in this article does not concern Steven Da Costa, but rather the absence of karate in Paris during the next Olympic Games. A choice which was already difficult to understand in 2021, and which is even less so a few months before the 2024 deadline. How can the organizing committee deprive itself of a visually spectacular discipline, in which France shines ( five medals at the Worlds this year) and which has in its ranks a 27-year-old champion with charisma only requiring a little more consideration to fully express himself? To be clear, the answer will probably never come. Or at least, it will never convince.
Like Steven Da Costa who declared in August 2021, when mass was said for his discipline: “These are excuses (that breakdancing, skateboarding and climbing are younger sports, accessible and connected) which annoys me a little. We are completely moving away from the values of the Olympic Games, we are talking about money, audiences, we are no longer talking about sport, so I understand the decision even less.” Since then, to be clear, his frustration has not subsided at all. “When you see that for Los Angeles, there will be flag football and lacrosse, you realize that the Americans are more intelligent than us in favoring sports where they dominate,” he told us at Etoiles du Sport. Before letting go, disillusioned: “I don’t think I would go to see these Games, or differently, just on judo to see Clarisse (Agbégnénou) and Teddy (Riner). But that’s all. In Paris, it’s going to be madness, so go there but not to compete and be in trouble with transportation or anything else…”
An absence that must nonetheless be mourned. The one who has just won his third European title in 2023, then his third consecutive world crown, a historic feat for a Frenchman, will not have the right to participate in Paris 2024. Which does not take away anything from his “ very good year”, as he sums it up himself. “Especially since this World Championship was more important than the others, because it allowed me to write history. I suffered psychologically because I put more pressure on myself. I was more tense, tense, not completely myself until I freed myself. This was without a doubt my hardest. From now on, I am highly expected and I pay more dearly for each of my mistakes. Like his very close final, which he won against the Montenegrin Nenad Dulovic (5-3), after already a half on the wire against the Kazakh Didar Amirali (1-0).
And during these Worlds, Steven Da Costa was not content to shine solo since he added a team bronze medal, “the best possible result according to him” for this France collective that he leads in his wake , but who still has to pass one last milestone to aim for gold. Now, the karateka from Mont-Saint-Martin, in Meurthe et Moselle, aspires to rest. Also to better measure the scope of his exploits. “I can’t achieve such a record. When people compare me to sporting superstars in France, I have a hard time putting myself in the same box. Or I don’t see myself there at all. Perhaps because I am still an athlete and I will need time, and perspective, to better appreciate my journey. But here, I don’t see myself as a great champion, but just as a warrior who has charted his path well and for whom it has worked very well.” Not enough in the eyes of the organizers of Paris 2024, however.
