Nearly 500 rooms, beds 2.20 m long: the Olympic village of Lille, which will host the basketball and handball teams during the Olympic Games, was inaugurated this Monday in Villeneuve-d’Ascq (North). Thirty-six matches of the first round of basketball (July 27-August 4) and 16 matches of the final handball phases (August 6 to 11) will take place at the Pierre-Mauroy stadium, a few minutes’ drive from the residence, named “Olympium “. The project, led by the developer Adim Nord Picardie, a subsidiary of Vinci, and the co-developer Bouygues Immobilier, began in October 2022.
Just over a month before the opening ceremony of the Games on July 26, not all the rooms are ready yet. In some, the mattresses are still in their covers; in others, the dust from the construction site has not yet been cleaned. But this inauguration means that “the residence will no longer suffer from delays” and that “there are no more subjects that can disturb us”, rejoiced to AFP Yannick Le Borgne, responsible for the committee of organization of the Olympic Games by holding events in Lille.
During the Games, the French men’s and women’s handball teams will be hosted in the Olympic village from the quarter-finals onwards (in the event of qualification), as well as the French women’s basketball team during the preliminary round, assured Damien Castelain, saying he “regrets” that French men’s basketball players do not do the same. “They will regret it, because they did not see the site,” he smiled. The American basketball team, and its NBA stars, will not be present either.
Made up of 495 rooms, from T1 to T3, for 550 beds, the Olympic village will be shared from September between a student residence and an accommodation center for athletes training in the metropolis. Damien Castelain hopes in particular to see athletes from high-level clubs in the surrounding area settle there.
A few hectometers from the residence, there are the Villeneuve-d’Ascq women’s basketball club, reigning French champion, and the Marcq-en-Barœul men’s rugby club, which last season was close to promotion to 3rd grade. division.
