“Gagner du terrain”: Facilities to encourage sport

The FDJ is an official partner of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games and behind the “Gagner du terrain” (Gaining Ground) operation, which aims to endow about fifty towns with free-access sports facilities.

Traditionally active in French professional and amateur sport, the FDJ joined up with the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic organising committee and the National Sport Agency (ANS) to launch the “Gagner du terrain” initiative. The aim is simple: to support the roll-out of local, free-access sports facilities, in order to contribute to the development of active participation in sport by French people, before, during and after the Olympics.

By 2024 more than fifty towns will have joined the movement and opened a “Gagner du terrain” ground, comprising an athletics track equipped with a solar chronometer, a multi-activities podium, open air gymnastics equipment and “active design” elements traced on the ground. A QR code on each piece of equipment offers teaching videos produced by Sarah Ourahmoune, Olympic boxing silver medallist and patron of the FDJ Sport Factory group of athletes. Exercises at different levels (beginner, intermediate or advanced) will give each person the chance to discover enjoyable ways to get moving and have fun.

The first “Gagner du terrain” ground was installed in the commune of Tremblay-en-France on 16 May, in the presence of Stéphane Pallez, Managing Director of the FDG group, Frédéric Sanaur, Director of the National Sport Agency, Tony Estanguet, Paris 2024 President, Sarah Ourahmoune and Valentin Prades, pentathlete and member of the FDJ Sport Factory. A collaboration between several partners which shows the federating power of the Olympics and the legacy the event means to leave to the French regions. Apart from Tremblay-en-France (Seine-Saint-Denis), four other towns were selected in 2021 to benefit from the scheme: Le Lude (Sarthe), Grigny (Rhône), Montargis (Loiret) and L’Ile-Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis). They will soon be joined by 12 other towns, selected following a call for proposals which closed at the end of June and open to towns with the “Terre de Jeux 2024” certification.