Reconciling high-level sport and motherhood can sometimes be an obstacle course.
Or the fighter, especially when you have young children and you breastfeed them.
Judoka Clarisse Agbégnénou, qualified for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and mother of a little girl born in June 2022, knows this only too well.
The queen of tatami mats - she is one of the most successful athletes in her discipline with two Olympic titles and eight world championship medals - asked the French Olympic committee for an exemption: to be able to take her daughter with her during the Games.
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As a reminder, the rule at the Olympic Village is that children cannot sleep there.
They can possibly be “invited” there during the day but generally the “guest passes are very restricted” and often dedicated to medical or sports staff, recalled Astrid Guyart, secretary general of the French Olympic committee (CNOSF), cited by AFP.
Rooms at the Pleyel hotel
Clarisse Agbégnénou's wish was finally granted this Monday, February 26.
It was, in fact, decided to be able to offer rooms at the Pleyel hotel, located a few hundred meters from the Olympic village in Saint-Denis, for mothers who are breastfeeding their children and thus offer “the best conditions of balance » to competitors and “take into account parenthood”, including fathers, explained Astrid Guyart during a press conference.
Also read: “Maternity should not be an obstacle to performance”
There will also be in this hotel which is about to open, “a 100 square meter family space” where parents will be able to spend time with their children whatever their age.
This system will begin from the opening of the Olympic village on July 18, 2024. “It’s unprecedented and it’s something that we want to last, that it’s not a bubble because it’s the Paris Olympics” , insisted Astrid Guyart, also president of the athletes’ commission.
For the moment, this represents a cost of “40,000 euros” for the French Olympic committee which organizes the entire system, but cannot say precisely how many athletes will ultimately be affected.
“These are exceptional measures, because leaving the village also means leaving the heart of the Olympics,” noted Marie-Amélie Le Fur, president of the French Paralympic committee.
For the Paralympic Games, the system will not be quite the same.
There will be the possibility for athletes, already planned for a long time, to be able to see their family within the France club.
Parents of children under one year old will be able to see them in the village during the day with a pass and the Paralympic Committee will study requests for hotel accommodation, particularly in the case of a mother who wishes to breastfeed her child. child.