It's the cold war between the French Handball Federation (FFHB) and the International Basketball Federation (Fiba).
On Tuesday, a board of directors of the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (Cojo) will be held to take stock of the reallocation of Olympic sites two years from the opening ceremony of the Paris Games.
Philippe Bana, president of the FFH, therefore chose to play his last cards by sending a letter on Saturday July 9 to Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, the Minister of Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
In this document, which Le Parisien was able to consult, the leader of the national handball body requests that French players be able to perform in the capital during the next Olympiad.
Indeed, it is the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Lille which is supposed to host handball matches at present.
"A high quality site where our Olympic champions will play with pleasure and pride", insists Philippe Bana who denounces however "an athlete experience of these champions (...) altered, with this total exclusion from Paris for them and them.
The tricolor handball boss relies on the record of French men's and women's handball which "has given France a number of medals often placing it at the forefront of French sport" and which as such,
“undoubtedly deserves at least balanced and respectful treatment.
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Views of hall 6 of the Paris exhibition center
However, this letter is not written in a tone of despair since the FFH has valid reasons to consider relocating handball matches to Paris in 2024. And for good reason, the Cojo and the International Basketball Federation (Fiba ) decided more than three months ago to abandon hall 6 of the Paris exhibition center to host basketball matches due to numerous technical constraints.
Therefore, the possibility of bringing part of handball back to Paris and placing the preliminary round of basketball at the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Lille, which had already hosted the European Championship for this discipline in 2015, before phases finals at the Accor Hotel Arena.
For the Cojo, this option has a double advantage.
On the one hand, organizational since it makes it possible to rebalance its program by allowing French handball, whose two teams are Olympic champions, to play in Paris.
On the other hand, economical because it also allows to avoid financial losses thanks to the consequent reception capacity of Lille's infrastructure.
"Our athletes and French handball supporters would not understand if this opportunity was swept away for misunderstood purposes," said Philippe Bana.
The balance between our collective sports would be destroyed and would turn into an incomprehensible injustice for our athletes, who are rather discreet on these issues.
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Fiba wants basketball to stay in Paris
If it accepted the abandonment of hall 6 of the Paris exhibition center, Fiba nevertheless wishes that the basketball meetings remain in the capital or the Paris region and that the teams can stay in the Olympic village.
The international basketball body points in particular to technical problems with the air conditioning within the Pierre-Mauroy stadium and therefore wishes that all the Parisian and Ile-de-France tracks be studied.
Among these tracks is the replacement of badminton at the Arena de La Chapelle, but the Cojo points out that no other site has a ceiling high enough to accommodate this discipline and that the opening of a new site would cost several millions of euros.
Another option considered by Fiba: another exhibition center, that of Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis) north-east of Paris.
By moving boxing there, initially planned on the Suzanne-Lenglen court at Roland-Garros, the Cojo attracted the attention of Fiba for this site which includes several halls.
The Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games is now obliged to provide studies showing that Lille is the best technical and financial solution for basketball and which also show that other avenues have been explored.
