There was little more than the distant echoes of the sound system and the voices of the announcers rising among the horns of drivers hurrying along the Paris ring road to presage a sign of life in the heart of the Dyonisian enclosure on Tuesday morning. in Saint-Denis. No queues winding for several tens of meters at the RER B exit, nor impatient spectators lit by the light balls installed under one of the tunnels leading to the Stade de France. However, within it, the first operational test of athletics in preparation for the Olympics (from July 26 to August 11) was going well, in the absence of an audience.
You had to reach the esplanade, go to the foot of the gates to smell the activity and observe the first actors. At around 11 a.m., when journalists were invited to enter the enclosure, we had already seen delegations of volunteers with caps or hard hats on their heads dispersing here and there, athletes with sports bags on their backs. sprinting from corner to corner to find the right entrance. The latter were among the nearly 150 lucky people, the majority licensed from the Ligue Île-de-France, to inaugurate the installations, high jumpers and pole vaults placed to the left of the presidential stand, shot put platforms and javelin arranged at the other end, all surrounded by the new purple track.
On the test program, this non-exhaustive list: flow and movements of athletes from the stadium to the warm-up field, travel time, scoring, giant screens, support for volunteers and judges.
“We need to test people, teams who have worked very little together, liaise with judges”
Alain Blondel, head of JOP athletics
“We know very well that the Stade de France knows how to manage large numbers of spectators, so we don’t need to test that.supported the head of JOP athletics, Alain Blondel. There is no audience, no TV feed, because we want to concentrate on the organization, the protocol. We need to test people, teams who have worked together very little, liaise with judges. We have around 200 judges, we will have 350 volunteers in the stadium only for the sports part so it is important to see how they behave, understand this stadium and help them a little. »
If the bulk of the work is completed and there are still some adjustments to be made in the stands, today’s test is also an opportunity to understand the “little traps” which are revealed gradually as this “infrastructure is gigantic”. There is this track “which we redone with technical elements that we changed compared to what existed before. We change habits, benchmarks, it’s important for the whole team to understand how it works. » But also these “traps that don’t close completely so suddenly we have a bit of infiltration”this sandbox where it is ultimately missing “two, three centimeters” which must be enhanced. “It’s little things like that, as long as we haven’t tested the practical side on site, we stay on Excel spreadsheets, plans and they rarely correspond to reality 100%. »
“I felt like I was flying away”
Under the clear morning sun, the most sensitive eyes must have squinted at the reverberation of this famous purple covering which constitutes the athletics track, but the essential thing was not there. This did not prevent several athletes from setting their personal best. “It’s a track that must be able to absorb energy and return it to the athletes at the right time,” promised Alessandro Picedi, research and development director of Mundo, last March.
According to Raphalledy Guillaume (17 years old), AS Pierrefitte kid and 100m finalist, the contract is fulfilled: “Even though I had a very bad start in the series, I felt like I was flying away. I felt very light, it’s a change from hard tracks, we put our foot on the ground and it allows us to propel ourselves. It’s a special track. I’ve never seen a track of this color, it makes you want to get excited even more. The organization, the music, the atmosphere is good, it’s magical to be here. »
“What’s great is that we chose to have real athletes, of a certain level, with very good qualities, Blondel indicated a little earlier. I’ve been seeing them since a while ago, they’re all smiling, smiling from ear to ear. They don’t want to leave the track, hang around near the gates, because they know they’ll never go back that way.”he smiled.
Raphalledy, who constantly dreamed of putting his spikes on the Games track since he received the famous email attesting to his participation in the event, has other plans. Failing to repress it, he aspires to “ pursue [son] effort” to “possibly make the Games one day”.
