Today Yann Bouchery receives Tony Estanguet, triple Olympic champion in single-seater canoeing, in Sydney in 2000, and Athens in 2004, and London in 2012, he remains the only French athlete to have won 3 individual gold medals, in three different Olympiads. Also triple world champion,
Tony Estanguet is now the president of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee.
Tony Estanguet is originally from Pau. He is the younger brother of Aldric Estanguet and Patrice Estanguet, bronze medalist in the same discipline at the Atlanta Games in 1996; they practiced canoeing or kayaking thanks to their father, Henri Estanguet, three times vice-champion of France and fourth at the 1981 Worlds.
During the year 2000, the two brothers Patrice and Tony had to fight to afford the second Olympic ticket available, and after three high-level races where the two athletes did not commit a fault, the youngest dismissed the eldest. to get his first selection. He thus has the double pressure of representing his country but also his brother, who could legitimately consider the Olympic title in the event of qualification. Contract fulfilled since Tony Estanguet won the gold medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
One of the greatest, if not the greatest moment of his career, “I remember it as if it were yesterday and yet more than 20 years ago” he declares. After the media madness that assailed him in the minutes that followed his title, the Marseillaise constituted a refuge, a bubble, where he was alone, which he needed to make concrete the supreme result he had just won. During his two other Olympic titles, he will share the national anthem much more with his relatives, the France team, in particular in London in 2012, when he ended his career in apotheosis.
In the process, he became a member of the IOC Athletes’ Commission the National Olympic Committee, participated in Paris’s bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, then once the French capital was designated, he took over the presidency of the Organizing Committee for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. On the occasion of the handover ceremony at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, a re-orchestrated Marseillaise is inducted, with a symphony orchestra and musicians in the streets of Paris, a Marseillaise also “chansigned” for the deaf and hard of hearing and which consists in translating the music with the expression of the body and the face.
Inclusion is at the heart of the project and “La Marseillaise” is a tool for promoting Paris 2024, says Tony Estanguet, also aware of the national anthem as part of a more personal commitment, the President of the Cojo is indeed this year the godfather of the war wounded of the army, as such he lived a tribute ceremony with 2000 soldiers and a poignant “Marseillaise”.
“We have an attachment to the national anthem because it is always experienced differently but each time takes us to strong emotions” believes Tony Estanguet who intends to hear it very often in 2024.