He will be the one who will have to manage the legacy of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. At 51 years old, Gil Avérous (ex-Les Républicains) was appointed, on Saturday 21 September, Minister of Sport, Youth and Community Life within Michel Barnier’s government.
Mayor of Châteauroux since 2014, the councillor had been lobbying intensely but discreetly for the city of Indre to host the Olympic shooting events, replacing La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis), after the – temporary – site initially planned was postponed due to the cost of decontaminating the land – full of hydrocarbons. “At first, nobody wanted Châteauroux. They didn’t dare to tell us, but it was: “Go look somewhere else.”welcomed at the beginning of the year the man who also chairs the Villes de France association, formerly the Federation of Mayors of Medium-Sized Cities.
In 2022, he won his case and Olympic and Paralympic shooters visited the Indre prefecture this summer.
On Avenue de France, Gil Avérous succeeds Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, to whom he had written on the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games – as well as to the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo – to express his indignation, having the feeling that Châteauroux had been mistreated as regards the places made available for the ceremony. Since 2022, during the Olympic preparations, the mayor of Châteauroux has made a habit of collaborating with Michel Cadot, inter-ministerial delegate for the Games and “driver” of the Olympic Games, now a member of Michel Barnier’s cabinet, responsible for community relations.
The man who was a master of media coverage, in order to get people talking about his city: in addition to the Olympic Games, Châteauroux twice hosted the Miss France elections, and in 2016 posted a video on the Internet asking the American businessman Elon Musk to set up a Tesla factory in the city, is now at the head of a ministry that reconnects with youth and community life.
Two worlds that are not unknown to those who advocated in 2023, as president of the Villes de France association, for a “Rebalancing and strengthening the presence of higher education in medium-sized cities” to avoid “seeing our young people go to study elsewhere”.
At the Ministry of Sport, Gil Avérous will have to implement the legacy of the Paris 2024 Games and plan the 2030 Winter Games, despite very reduced resources: the draft law on the programming of public finances for the period 2023-2027, adopted at the end of 2023, shows an 11% reduction in appropriations for sport. Familiar with French sport, largely financed by local authorities, the new locally elected minister knows the ground he is treading on.
