Katarina Johnson-Thompson will be one of only 50 track and field athletes at the Paris Olympics allowed to use the same iconic dressing room as France’s 1998 World Cup winners, the Guardian can reveal.
The home changing room at the Stade de France is regarded as an inner sanctum of French sport, with the shirts worn by the stars of that famous team, including Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry, still hanging on its walls.
Now organisers hope that by making it available to just the 25 decathletes and 25 heptathletes in Paris – out of 1,810 athletes overall – it will inspire France’s world record‑holder, Kevin Mayer, to win a decathlon gold medal. And, as a result, will spark renewed interest in athletics in France.
The plan is the brainchild of Alain Blondel, the sports manager for athletics at Paris 2024 and a former European champion decathlete, who told the Guardian that he wanted to link France’s football success 26 years ago with their Olympic ambitions over the next fortnight.
“It was at the end of the 90s that French sports people started to understand that it was possible to win,” Blondel said. “That was a switch for many of us. And that if the football team were able to do it, why not us? And that’s the link that we would like to have.
“This stadium is made for ball sports, for football and rugby. And while there are lots of changing rooms, there are two big ones in the central part of the stadium – and one will be dedicated to the combined events.”
The news – which until now has been a closely guarded secret – means that Team GB’s heptathlon world champion Johnson-Thompson, who is a huge football fan, will also get the unique opportunity to use the dressing room when she bids for her first Olympic medal along with Britain’s other heptathlete, Jade O’Dowda. To be fit for the Games Johnson-Thompson has undergone a number of painkilling injections in her troublesome achilles, which she said on Sunday “seems to have settled down now”.
Blondel said: “The only athlete we have told about this is Kevin Mayer, but we need to have history and to have stories. And it’s a part of our storytelling to offer some athletes the opportunity to be in this museum – well, it should not be a museum because it’s a place that needs to live, but it’s a part of history. So guys, you’re a part of history like those guys nearly 30 years ago.”
Blondel also confirmed that the Paris 2024 programme had been deliberately structured so that Mayer and the European championship bronze medallist Makenson Gletty would compete at the start of the track and field programme to build momentum for the French team.
“It was important for me to start with the decathlon,” he said. “So a year ago we discussed with World Athletics about having Kevin, the main medal possibility for France, going first. The decathlon is a show and our aim is to bring the mood and the goodwill in the stadium from the first morning, and it will be like a wheel rolling and rolling until the end of the competition.”
