the essential
The president of Stade Toulousain and former third row, Didier Lacroix, received the insignia of knight of the Legion of Honor this Tuesday evening in front of two hundred guests at the Ernest-Wallon stadium.
We were waiting for Didier Lacroix on the emotion chapter. But after receiving the insignia of knight of the Legion of Honor from the hands of former minister Didier Guillaume, member of the steering committee of the National Rugby League, the president of Stade Toulousain, on the other hand, set the bar much higher. Questioning the reasons for this “surprise” decoration, it was for the founding values of Republican France that the former third line said his first words. “I like France in its democratic conception. I claim to be a free man,” he said, outlining the basis of a life of commitment.
At this ceremony organized this Tuesday evening at the Ernest-Wallon stadium, which the Rouge et Noir president did not necessarily wish to publicize, in the presence of prefect Pierre-André Durand, his predecessor Etienne Guyot, Jean-Luc Moudenc, mayor of Toulouse, Carole Delga, president of the Region, and Sébastien Vincini, president of the Department, assisted many figures from the Stadium yesterday and today: Guy Novès, René Bouscatel, Fabien Pelous, Emile Ntamack, Patrick Soula, Xavier Garbajosa, Mathis Castro-Ferreira and many other guests, some two hundred in all, the restaurateur Michel Sarran, the winemaker Gérard Bertrand, Jean-Michel Baylet, president of “la Dépêche du Midi”…
Didier Lacroix told everyone of his “dream” of always making the Stadium grow. On the sporting field of course but also civic and social. The president thus outlined the project for an “open-plan” stadium, open, through multiple new activities, “to sport and health”. “A citizen club and actor of the city”.
