“It was an extraordinary adventure”: Gérard Larcher participated in the Olympics, winning a gold medal!

The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher participated in the Olympic Games before his political life. His team even won medals.

President of the Senate since 2014, senator since 1986, minister several times in the 2000s, mayor of Rambouillet for 28 years... Gérard Larcher is a central figure in French politics over the last thirty years. Originally from Flers, in Normandy, the second person in the State entered politics in 1979, within the right-wing party of the RPR. He was then elected municipal councilor of Rambouillet, before becoming mayor of the city between 1983 and 2004. He was also a minister during the second term of Jacques Chirac, between 2004 and 2007.

But Gérard Larcher also had a professional career before his political life, a career which took him to the point of participating in the Olympic Games! Indeed, Gérard Larcher was on the French selection's trip to Montreal in 1976, and his team even left Quebec with a gold medal. The future President of the Senate, second person of the State in the protocol order, is therefore part of the adventure of French sport. And this medal is special because, although he did not bring it back himself, he contributed to it as...veterinarian of the riding team.

The senator was in fact born in a land of horse riding and was working at the time of the Montreal Games at Haras du Pin, in Orne. He was then the official veterinarian of the French team and therefore accompanied the French riders to Canada. “It’s an emotion that we never forget, an extraordinary emotion,” recalls the President of the Senate, “I kept in touch with Belgian and British colleagues for a long time.” An experience all the more extraordinary since the French team won the gold medal in the team obstacle competition during these Montreal Games. Since then, Gérard Larcher has never stopped following horse riding. He congratulated the French team during its team title in Rio in 2016, with within this team Philippe Rozier, the son of Marcel Rozier, one of the riders present with the senator in 1976.

Gérard Larcher is not the only politician to have had a career linked to the Olympic Games before his election. Thus, a quarter of the sports ministers under the Fifth Republic participated directly or indirectly in the Games, such as Guy Drut, Olympic champion in 1976, David Douillet, Olympic champion in 1996 and 2000, and Laura Flessel, double Olympic champion. in 1996 and medalist in 2000 and 2004, or Roxana Maracineanu, silver medalist in 2000.

Horse riding is historically a discipline that provides Olympic medals for France. In addition to the 1976 and 2016 team titles, France has won 15 gold medals, and is the third most successful nation in the discipline. If the Tokyo Games were a failure for the equestrian selection, with only a bronze medal recovered, France should be one of the favorite teams in Paris.