After the Olympics, sports clubs are full “We are breaking all records in all age groups”
On this first Saturday in September, you have to elbow your way through the aisles of the Forum des associations in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine) to make your way to the location of the Cercle des mousquetaires. On the partition of the stand, photos of the club’s two star fencers, Maxime Pauty and Maximilien Chastanet, team bronze medalists at the Paris 2024 Games. At 50, Paul would like to try his hand at foil, too. But when it’s his turn to register, it’s a cold shower. All the slots are already full. An undeniable effect of the Olympics. “No one shows up and says: ‘I want to be Maxime Pauty,'” jokes Édouard Dumont, the sports director. But our medalists have given our sport a visibility that it never usually has. Today, people think more about fencing when choosing their activity. “This season, the club should operate with 190 members, compared to 151 last year. And more than 40 people are on the waiting list.
It’s not just fencing that’s making waves. All the sports where the French shone this summer have seen their popularity ratings soar. Swimming, of course, driven by the exceptional performances of Léon Marchand, but also judo, triathlon, and volleyball. The clubs were expecting it a bit, of course: “After the previous Olympic medal, three years ago, we saw the requests explode,” recalls Nicolas Roumier, president of Issy-les-Moulineaux volleyball. Except that this year, we’re breaking all the records in all age groups.”
The Lebrun effect
Previously considered a fun game to play with friends, ping-pong has gained its letters of nobility with the public, who now call it, as it should be, “table tennis”. The craze affects children and adults alike. Witness Guillaume, 32, a player until he was 18, who wanted to get back into it after seeing the exploits of the Lebrun brothers. “We’ve always had people at the club,” continues Natacha Kwiatek, coach at the Entente pongiste isséenne. But with Covid, we had lost a lot of members. Félix and Alexis’ bronze medal was a great PR stunt for our sport, which is not very publicized. We’re seeing a lot of little ones arrive that we didn’t see before.” Far from being limited to the city’s borders, the Lebrun effect is confirmed in all the clubs in France. “We had expected an increase in the number of members, but we are still surprised by the number!” admits Margaux Lebrun, administrative manager of the Montpellier table tennis club and sister of the two medalists. “The day after Félix won his medal, we had 114 messages in our mailbox.” During its first open day, the club registered more than 250 registrations, including 63 young people in their first year (33 last year at the same time), and 8 children already want to play with the pen-hold grip, the way Félix holds his racket.
Faced with this influx, table tennis clubs are trying to adapt as best they can. To accommodate everyone, managers are changing training schedules, dividing groups, adding tables and hiring additional staff. Swimming clubs are also getting into gear. “We’re going to do everything we can to accommodate as many children as possible, but in our sport, even more than elsewhere, we are constrained by safety regulations,” recalls Patrick Perez, deputy treasurer of the French Swimming Federation. The only solution: build more water sports facilities, which requires time and, above all, political will. “The last national plan dates back to 1969,” he recalls. In the process, 181 swimming pools were built, but since then, the momentum has waned.
The same story is heard at the French Cycling Federation, which has 108,000 members. “Today, we have 270 BMX tracks in France that are already saturated. To cope with the demand that arrived in large numbers the day after the French triple (gold, silver and bronze medals, Editor’s note), we will necessarily have to reinforce the equipment,” emphasizes Michel Callot, president of the federation. Here too, the operation will take several years. In the meantime, the federation has put the turbo on the training of instructors. It has also planned to improve the lighting system on existing tracks to expand the slots of use. For France, the stakes are national: our country is at the bottom of the ranking of physical activity among young people established by the World Health Organization*.
* Ranked 119th out of 146 countries, according to a 2019 study published in The Lancet.
