On August 5, the Steven Da Costa became the first men's Olympic champion in karate, a discipline included for the first time in the Olympic Games. The sport's first and last Olympic medal? Since his title, the Frenchman thus delivers another fight, media this time, so that karate is present in Paris 2024. In an interview of August 9 on France Info, Tony Estanguet, president of the organizing committee of the Olympic Games , assumed that karate is no longer on the program, putting the choice "on sports (Break dance, climbing, skateboarding and surfing) which are a hit on social networks and which young people watch a lot. "
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I trained like hard.
I took on my favorite role.
I brought the gold back to France.
I carried the flag high.
I was on cloud nine.
Waking up hurts.
In 2024, with your support, I want to defend my Olympic title in Paris.
🇫🇷🥋 https://t.co/jQBE8KyLtp pic.twitter.com/QLCLeJ4tPK
- Steven Da Costa (@Steven_DaCosta) August 11, 2021
Since then, several personalities have supported French karateka, such as sports minister Roxana Maracineanu. And these are new strong allies who are coming to help him. Indeed, a little more than fifty deputies, of all political stripes, addressed an open letter Thursday to Tony Estanguet. "After a first official introduction in 2020, it would be difficult to understand and bearable for karate to be dispossessed of its" Olympic "status by France, which has the first champion of the Olympic Games that it will not be able to defend", write the elected officials.
"We owe it to the some 250,000 French women and men of all generations who practice this combat sport in total adequacy with the Olympic values ​​and those of the spirit of Coubertin", they add, specifying that there are 250 000 karate licensees in France and 10 million practitioners worldwide.
"Young, accessible and connected sports"
Despite this strong support, the organizing committee persists and signs in a press release published on Thursday. “Paris 2024 would first of all like to warmly congratulate Steven Da Costa and French karate for this historic Olympic title and hear their disappointment the day after such a strong sporting moment,” recalls the committee. The latter points out in particular the constraints "in order to limit the size of the Games", with an overall number of athletes limited to 10,500, shifting the number of additional sports from 4 instead of 5 as for the Tokyo Games. After presentations from several sports federations, “breaking (dance), climbing, skateboarding and surfing were selected in February 2019 by Paris 2024 for proposal to the IOC. A choice guided by the identity of these young sports,accessible and connected with their times in line with the vision of Paris 2024 and complementary to the existing imposed program. "