Victory for Châteauroux, Déols and the department of Indre! The National Sports Shooting Center (CNTS) of Châteauroux-Déolsthe largest shooting center in Europe inaugurated with great fanfare four years ago, will host the discipline’s Olympic events as part of the 2024 Paris Olympics. A unique opportunity for the territory confirmed this Tuesday by the board of directors of the organizing committee of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
From elected officials to angels…
The board of directors had met to decide definitively on the choices of the sites that remained outstanding. Thus the preliminary phases of the basketball events will be held in Lille, boxing on the Villepinte site in Seine-Saint-Denis while the shooting which was to take place at La Courneuve will be held in Châteauroux. A choice of reason supported, according to our information, for several months by the French sports shooting federation and obviously local politicians.
Marc Fleuret has been leading the project for years and is delighted to see it come to fruition, “It’s not every day that we host Olympic events on a territory outside the host city. For me, it’s a culmination,“explains the president of the county council who seems to be living a daydream.If one day someone had told me that the Olympic events would be held in the Indre department, I would not necessarily have believed it.”
However, it took a lot of conviction to bring the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games to validate this choice even if it always seemed the most obvious in the eyes of Marc Fleuret: “we really have a site that is totally accessible for the Paralympians, it’s very important, we mustn’t forget that. And then which can accommodate all the disciplines at the highest level, so of course at the Olympic level.” Gil Avérous, the mayor and president of Châteauroux Métropole worked hand in hand with his counterpart in the department and shares with him a “feeling of great joy for the territory of Châteauroux, the department and the region“.
…But still a lot of work
However, there is still a lot of preparation work to be done in the next two years. L’accommodation of athletes, their travel, reception of spectators and financial considerations are priority issues. The French Shooting Federation is going to set up a site to be able to accommodate 400 people, but it would take 700 places in total to accommodate everyone. The opportunity to modernize “hotel rooms sometimes a bit aging” according to Gil Avérous. A support plan for the modernization of the hotel industry had also been voted on during the last community council of the agglomeration. Reflections are also launched to succeed in welcoming all the delegations within 20 minutes of the site.