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PARIS — At the end of this year’s opening ceremony, after the last athletes make their way down the Seine, disembark their boats and wait in line behind 11,000 other athletes for a scoop of Berthillon ice cream, somebody will have had the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron. It should be Zinedine Zidane.
Zidane, who led France to a 1998 World Cup triumph on home soil, is arguably the most important living and retired French athlete. The child of Algerian immigrants, he grew up in La Castellane, a rough neighborhood in Marseille, and rose to the top of his sport. He has identified himself as a non-practicing Muslim. This is a fraught moment for France, as a party of anti-immigrant right-wing extremists—campaigning on a platform of racial intolerance—is coming dangerously close to assuming power. Giving Zidane the honor would make a clear statement about what it should mean to be French.
Zidane never played in the Olympics, so in a way, he would be an unconventional choice. But there is no rule that an Olympian has to light the cauldron. Over the years, even non-athletes have kindled the flame. The French could also lean hard into their national ethos and light the cauldron with a Gauloise. But the moment calls for a choice with political implications.
When Zidane became a star, far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front bristled at the notion that Zidane and his multiethnic teammates really represented France. Le Pen also bristled at the notion that the Holocaust happened. His daughter, Marine Le Pen, has rebranded the party as the National Rally and distanced herself from her father’s beliefs. But she has really just repurposed and redirected her father’s hate.
Marine Le Pen wrote that she decried the barbarism of concentration camps “as early as 2011,” as though voicing opposition to Nazi Germany in the year she turned 43 qualifies her for the Nobel peace prize. She has also called Muslim street prayers an “occupation” and said she wants to ban hijabs in public spaces. (For this year’s Games, the French Sports Ministry has banned its athletes who observe the hijab from competing in the Paris Olympics, though they are permitted to wear hijabs in athletes’ villages.)
National Rally president Jordan Bardella has said: “I’ve experienced to the core the feeling of becoming a foreigner in one’s own country. I’ve experienced the Islamization of my neighborhood.” I would like to believe that Bardella was misquoted, and that what he actually experienced was the llama-ization of his neighborhood; trust me when I tell you that as soon as you let the llamas in, traffic is a nightmare and public schools go to hell. But no: Bardella was in fact complaining that people in his neighborhood did not share his religious beliefs, and this bothered him so much that he felt like a foreigner in his own country.
The National Rally is creeping closer to the French Presidency. French soccer star Kylian Mbappé has spoken out against the party, and so has Zidane: “It is the same as in 2002, that I am far away from those ideas, from the National Front, and that we have to avoid it as much as we can.”
Zidane is not the perfect ambassador. His international career ended when he headbutted Italy’s Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Final, and he promoted Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid because of a deep commitment to the money Qatar was paying him. But there is also no rule that the cauldron-lighter must be a saint. I think Zidane’s flaws and mistakes actually make him a better symbol: We should not ask our superstars—or anyone else—to be perfect, just human.
The honor of lighting the cauldron was not always a big deal; Olympic historian Bill Mallon says he does not remember the ritual getting much notice until 1984, when decathlete Rafer Johnson lit the cauldron in Los Angeles. Since then, the choice has often been tinged with societal implications.
Muhammad Ali, who famously refused to participate in what he considered an unjust war in Vietnam, lit the cauldron in Martin Luther King’s hometown of Atlanta in 1996. Aboriginal Australian Cathy Freeman did it in Sydney in 2000. When Naomi Osaka lit the cauldron in Tokyo in 2021, it was a validation of her decision to step away from tennis temporarily to address her mental health.
The French have options beyond Zidane: Amelia Mauresmo, Tony Parker, Yannick Noah. Triple gold-medalist skier Jean-Claude Killy seems like a good choice, but—I’m warning you, this sentence takes a turn—he has complained about mistreatment of his friend Vladimir Putin. Biathlete Martin Fourcade, the most decorated French Olympian, is on the organizing committee; he could light the cauldron, but that would go against the Olympic tradition of keeping political patronage behind closed doors. The French could also go with a descendant of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, but … why? Do the French really need to spark a debate about a man whose views of sport do not exactly hold up in modern society?
Zidane’s love for his country is indisputable. The former Real Madrid coach has turned down a chance to coach Algeria, and he has avoided taking another club job, but everybody knows he would climb the Eiffel Tower for a chance to coach France’s national team. This is France’s chance to send a signal to the world: A temperamental child of Muslim immigrants is as French as anyone else in this country. Zidane is not an ideal choice. But he is the right one.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Why Zinedine Zidane Should Light the Olympic Cauldron in Paris.
