Team France at the Tokyo Olympics

Exactly 378 French athletes, 166 women and 212 men, form Team France at the summer Olympic games held from July 23 to August 8 in Tokyo. The 32nd Olympic games of the modern era, should have been held last year but were postponed for a year because of the 2020 pandemic. 

“Qualified and vaccinated!”. This is the title of the French government information website covering the event and presenting the French athletes who went to Tokyo “with, in luggage, hours of training, the health documents required by the authorities and their dream of winning a medal”.

A blue-white-red shirt

During the Olympics, a dedicated website for Team France present in detail all the French Olympic champions in competition and offer a focus on the champions of the previous editions.

Indeed, “throughout the generations, and through their achievements and performance”, French athletes “forged the history of France”. The website, as the voice of athletes, underlines that “we train to achieve excellence. No sport can be played alone. From the judoka to the racer, from basket players to wheelchair tennis players, we are the stitches that form the same blue-white-red shirt”.

The linked history of France and the Olympic Games

The Olympic Games are blue-white-red in more than one way, because the Olympic Games owe a lot to France! Indeed, it’s a Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin, who founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894 “to contribute to the rise of a peaceful and better world through the education of youth by means of sport”. The first Olympic Games of the modern era were recreated for the first time in 1896 in Athens.

Since this revival of the Games, France has participated in all editions (Winter and Summer Olympics), winning a total of 2,052 medals, including 657 gold medals. This year, 378 athletes will represent France in the Olympic Games, a lower number than at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016, when France was represented by 399 athletes, the highest total in the history of the Olympic Games.

Prominent French presence

Among the few Heads of State on site, the French President honoured the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games on 23 July as a prominent representative of the host country of the next edition of the Olympic Games, which are scheduled to take place in Paris in 2024.

Commenting on his visit to Tokyo, the President said that he was in Japan “to support and relay, to support the Olympic spirit, the Japanese organisation and the French athletes”, with the hope that the French “will bring back as many medals as possible”. As soon as the Japanese Olympic Games will be over, the countdown will be launched “to organise the 2024 Olympic Games in France in the best conditions possible”.

The Paralympics in the wake of the Games

But before landing in France, the Olympic Games will convert to the Paralympic Games. And it is in the wake of the Olympic Games, from 24 August to 5 September, that more than 4,400 athletes from all nations will compete in Tokyo, for the Summer Paralympic Games. These Games bring together athletes with disabilities, whether physically, visually or mentally, in “handisport events”, which are events adapted to the disability. Over twenty disciplines in which France participates are on the programme, including athletics, canoeing, swimming, judo, archery, horse riding and badminton.

Team France’s official website concludes that for decades, “thousands of us have been travelling the world to represent France. As Olympic and Paralympic athletes, in winter or summer, we are, for the first time, the French Olympic and Paralympic Team.”

To know more: 

- The Olympic on the French government website

- Team France’s official website

- The French Olympic National Comittee

Photo credit: © BENOIT TESSIER /REUTERS - stock.adobe.com