A French sprinter is expected to swap her headscarf for a cap in order to participate in the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics, in a compromise reportedly struck after the country’s strict laws on secularism threatened to bar her from the event.
Earlier this week Sounkamba Sylla, a Muslim member of France’s 400m women’s and mixed relay teams, said she would not be able to take part in Friday’s ceremony because she wears a hijab.
“You are selected for the Olympics, organised in your country, but you can’t participate in the opening ceremony because you wear a headscarf,” the 26-year-old wrote on social media.
Her predicament recast a spotlight on the tensions that have rumbled in the background since France’s minister for sport said last September that athletes representing France would be barred from displaying religious symbols, including headscarves, during sporting events.
Rights groups responded by calling on the French government to reverse its decision, describing it as discriminatory and one that had left many Muslim athletes “invisible, excluded and humiliated”. The French stance was also criticised by the UN, which said “no one should impose on a woman what she needs to wear, or not wear”.
The rules do not affect foreign athletes in France for the Games. But this week, as thousands of athletes, including some who wear headscarves, began arriving in the country, the government appeared keen to downplay the longstanding tensions between the laïcité laws on the wearing of religious symbols and the perception that these laws discriminate against Muslims.
David Lappartient, the president of the French Olympic Committee, said French Olympians were bound by secular principles. “It’s perhaps sometimes not understandable in other countries in the world, but it’s part of our DNA here in France,” he added.
The French minister for sport and the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, said the authorities were working to find a solution. “Our citizens expect us to follow these principles of secularism, but we also need to be inventive about solutions to make everyone feel good,” she said on Wednesday.
Late on Wednesday Sylla said an agreement had been reached to allow her to participate in the opening ceremony.
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While she did not offer further details, the French Olympic Committee told Agence France-Presse that the sprinter had accepted the idea of wearing a cap as the parade winds along the Seine River.
However, this appeared unlikely to quell the disquiet over the French rules. In a video posted on social media this week the Australian boxer Tina Rahimi said she was “grateful” to be able to compete while wearing a hijab.
“But it’s so unfortunate for the athletes in France because it has nothing to do with your performance. And it should not get in the way of you being an athlete,” she said. “It’s so hard for you to be an Olympic athlete and to think that you have to give away your faith to participate in these events.”
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