Olympic success, Champions League final fiasco… Amélie Oudéa-Castéra’s assessment at the Ministry of Sports

The Minister of Sports, Olympic and Paralympic Games was replaced by Gil Avérous, Mayor of Châteauroux, in Michel Barnier’s government, after a mandate of just over two years marked by his brief stint in Education.

Habemus administrationTwo weeks after being appointed Prime Minister, Michel Barnier unveiled his government on Saturday 21 September, composed of 39 ministers. Among the waltz of outgoing ministers or secretaries of state, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, at the helm for a little over two years, is leaving the Ministry of Sports, Olympic and Paralympic Games. She is replaced by Gil Avérous, non-partisan mayor of Châteauroux. A look back at the record of the one who was appointed in May 2022, between successes, arm wrestling and controversies.

The success of the Olympic and Paralympic Games

It was the big deadline of his mandate and the word “success” is not too much, since the Paris Games were a big one, both on the organizational level and on the sporting level for the French delegation. The event avoided all the pitfalls, the foreign press was dithyrambic, the sites were full, the transport worked and the atmosphere was there.

More than 12 million tickets were sold for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games (with a capacity fill rate of around 95%), a figure that easily beats the record set by the London 2012 Games (10.9 million tickets sold).

On a purely sporting level, the French Olympic and Paralympic delegations achieved their objectives by finishing 5th and 8th in the medal table.This is the best record since 1900 for the Olympic Games and since 2000 for the Paralympics.

“It’s a huge satisfactionstressed Amélie Oudéa-Castéra in an interview with Figaro, September 8th. This is the reward for a strategy that has been thought out for several years, with unprecedented means put to the service of precise objectives. There was of course everything concerning the technical and mental preparation of the athletes, but also their support beyond sport.”

Housekeeping done in two large federations

This was not one of the objectives of his mandate, and yet, “AOC” had to put his hands in federations shaken by burning issues. If the Minister of Sports did not have the power to force Noël Le Graët and Bernard Laporte, at the head of the football (FFF) and rugby (FFR) federations, out of office while they were caught up in scandals, she succeeded.

First, Bernard Laporte. Sentenced on December 13, 2022 to a two-year suspended prison sentence and a €75,000 fine for passive corruption, influence peddling, illegal taking of interests, concealment of misuse of corporate assets and misuse of corporate assets, in particular for the benefit of the Altrad group, the former president of the FFR had proposed to step down from his duties as president and that a deputy president be appointed. Not enough for the minister, nor for the rugby authorities. Bernard Laporte finally announced his resignation a little over a month after his conviction – which he appealed – on January 27, 2023.

For Noël Le Graët, after numerous slip-ups, pressure from the minister, a damning audit report and the opening of a preliminary investigation for “moral and sexual harassment“, had made his continuation impossible and forced him to resign on February 28, 2023. This report pointed out a “highly centralized exercise of power”, “media slip-ups”A “inappropriate behavior towards women” and “failures in the governance of the FFF”.

The minister herself was criticized for the salary she received when she was general director of the French Tennis Federation, from 2021 to 2022. According to a parliamentary inquiry report unveiled in January 2024, eShe then received a gross salary of 400,000 euros per year, plus 100,000 euros in bonuses. Auditioned in November 2023, she had claimed that her salary was “very close to that of its predecessor”while it was 86,000 euros higher.

The fight against sexist and sexual violence strengthened

Since the beginning of her mandate, “AOC” has made the fight against sexist and sexual violence (SSWV) a priority. “No argument, not even the quest for a medal, must hold us back in this fight. I will be uncompromising because we owe it to the victims, to our children and to the values ​​of sport.”she insisted in March, during the presentation of the results of her ministry’s action on the subject.

Although she admitted at the time that the Signal Sport reporting unit, set up by her predecessor, Roxana Maracineanu, in 2020, was not well-known, the minister welcomed the intensification of checks: “1.9 million volunteers have been checked. One of the objectives is to double the number of establishment checks from 3,900 to 6,000 in 2024. This type of check did not exist four years ago.” Eighty sports representatives have been appointed within the courts.

Before the dissolution of the National Assembly, a law concerning VSS in sport was to be tabled “end of November or beginning of December for registration in public session at the beginning of 2025”The tracks then engaged were “lifetime license suspension in the most serious cases of sexual and gender-based violence”but also the strengthening of integrity checks for all volunteers. This law would encompass other sports themes, such as democracy within federations.

Champions League final chaos to start

A few days after her appointment, in May 2022, Amélie Oudéa-Castera had to deal with one of France’s biggest organizational failures in terms of a sporting event: the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid at the Stade de France.

While it was mainly the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and the Paris police prefect at the time, Didier Lallement, who were targeted by the criticism and the damning report from the Senate, “AOC” for a long time did not want to dissociate herself from the decisions that were taken, nor from the comments made on the responsibility of the English supporters, whom she accused of having turned up en masse with fake tickets.What happened was a disastrous experience. I have apologised to the Liverpool and Real Madrid fans. It is a deep wound that has affected us all (…) I want fans never to be exposed to such a situation again.“, she conceded on the set of La Chaîne L’Equipe in May 2023.

A very short term as Minister of Education

On January 11, 2024, as part of the previous reshuffle, Amélie Oudéa-Castera took over, in addition to the Sports and Olympic Games portfolio, that of Education. During her first trip, alongside Gabriel Attal, then Prime Minister, AOC made a statement that would already cause her downfall.

Asked about the schooling of her children in a private establishment, the minister replied that their transfer from the public to the private sector was carried out after having “saw packets of hours that were not seriously replaced”This was all it took for trust with the teaching staff to be broken and for the minister to become embroiled in a controversy from which she was unable to extricate herself.

Three weeks after her appointment, teachers were on the streets during a strike on February 1st. Although the executive initially maintained its confidence in her, the tension eventually became too great. During a second wave of appointments on February 8th, it was finally Nicole Belloubet who took over Education, with Amélie Oudéa-Castéra only keeping her portfolio of Sports and the Olympic Games.