With 14 months to go before the Olympic Games, time is running out for Denis Gargaud-Chanut. Not selected for the qualifying events at Paris 2024, the Rio Olympic champion will file a request for interim relief with the administrative court of Melun. To understand the motivations behind this gesture, we must go back a few weeks.
The conflict began on May 3 when the French Canoe-Kayak Federation (FFCK) announced the list of selected canoe slalom France team for the upcoming international events, a must for a chance to compete in the Paris Olympic Games. Lucas Roisin, Nicolas Gestin and Jules Bernardet were the three lucky winners, but one absence raises questions, that of Denis Gargaud-Chanut.
The Olympic champion of Rio in 2016 is then offended by this absence that he does not find fair. "I really do not understand, it is in any case not a sporting choice since I am 4th in the world and best French so they can not justify it" he told us at the beginning of May.
Le Provençal contests this decision with the conciliator of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF), Alain Lacabarats in this case. The latter delivered his verdict on May 25 and proposed to the FFCK to integrate Denis Gargaud-Chanut into the World Cup: "It follows that, in the opinion of the conciliator, the decision of the FFCK not to select the applicant could be regarded, in the state of the proceedings, as being vitiated by a manifest error of assessment".
Paris 2024: Marjorie Delassus, on behalf of the mother, brother and the Olympic Games
Despite this opinion, the FFCK informed the Olympic champion, the next day, that it refused the conciliation proposal. It is for this reason that Denis Gargaud-Chanut, already absent from the Tokyo Games, has chosen to file a request for interim relief with the administrative court of Melun to contest his non-selection.
