Johanna Frändén: Can a new French president simply take care of Putin in a judo match?

Is it harder to win Olympic gold than a presidential election?

The question is not as hypothetical as it sounds.

In half a year, France will choose a new leader and it is that time in the five-year cycle when essayists, rabble-rousers and animal rights activists all feel the republic calling them to announce their candidacy.

Few French people raise their eyebrows when leaders of parties with names like the Patriots or the Permanent Revolution run for president - we're already up to thirty official names. But this week the bombshell came that made even the most politically disillusioned French people panic.

Out of nowhere, five-time Olympic judo champion Teddy Riner declared that he wants to be president. A gentle breeze suddenly passed through November gray France.

A national icon in the Elysée Palace!

It's like Mondo Duplantis becoming Swedish prime minister. Or Ingmar Stenmark and Björn Borg, during their active sports careers. But bigger.

The 37-year-old, who is over two meters tall and weighs almost 150 kilograms, is France's most popular athlete and one of the most popular Frenchmen in general.

Teddy Riner was born on Guadeloupe, a French island in the West Indies, and in 2024 he had the honor of lighting the Olympic flame in Paris. With two golds in the Games on home soil, he became more or less immortal.

In the first day alone, the video where he announces his candidacy was viewed by over 25 million people. Surveys have previously shown that nine out of ten French people have a "good impression" of Teddy Riner.

These are figures the rest of the political class can only dream of. The question is whether they can be converted into voter support? According to a lightning-fast opinion poll after the announcement, 22 percent can already imagine casting their vote for the Olympic hero.

Teddy Riner's party La France qu'on veut - The France we want - places itself "either on the right or on the left", because "common sense" must guide the decisions. Approximately.

He will return with a party program, but the ambition is to improve the lives of those who work, make the streets safe, reduce employer contributions and maybe - hold on to your hat - abolish the 35-hour week in the French labor market. (Say you're right without saying you're right, and so on.)

Teddy Riner wants to be a president who "unites the French and does not divide them". The idea to run for office was born after the Olympics in Paris.

"I saw an entire country united, proud and happy. A few weeks later, everything fell apart and I thought: If we could do it for two weeks, it must be possible to revive, for the sake of the country," Teddy Riner told Le Parisien.

I believe neither in utopias of united peoples nor in politics that are "neither right nor left". Life consists (unfortunately) to 95 percent of everyday drudgery, and when different groups must agree on financial resources, conflicts of interest always arise.

Giving up judo is not in the plans of France's latest presidential candidate. Teddy Riner's bid for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics continues

But you can understand the allure of voting for a big collectible teddy bear, in an autumn when everyone else is just screaming. More than half of the French recently stated that they feel disgusted with the entire political class. In the absence of other palatable options, Teddy Riner's candidacy may well redraw the playing field.

The strong men – Bolsonaro, Trump and Orbán – are losing ground everywhere in politics right now. Only Vladimir Putin clings to power in an increasingly war-weary Russia. Putin himself has a black belt in judo, something that of course opens up some kind of martial arts diplomacy if Teddy Riner becomes president. If talks do not end the Russian attack on Ukraine, he must neutralize the Russian president directly on the carpet.

Giving up judo is not in the plans of France's latest presidential candidate. Teddy Riner's commitment to the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 continues "if the mission and the French allow it".

So there is a – let's be honest, pretty slim – possibility that France will be represented by its sitting president at the Summer Olympics in two years' time. Even China has not succeeded in this, despite the fact that in his time Mao Zedong swam faster than the entire world elite.

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