Teddy Riner has five Olympic gold medals. On Monday he said he wants a prize no Black person in France has ever won: the presidency.
“Je m’appelle Teddy Riner et je vous le dis, les yeux dans les yeux, je suis candidat à l’élection présidentielle,” the 37-year-old judoka said in a video. He told Le Parisien: “Je suis candidat pour dire qu’on peut relever la France.” His motto is “La résignation n’est pas une option.” His campaign, called La France qu’on veut, says it belongs to neither the left nor the right.
The Black stake is not abstract for him. After Riner told a French sports show that the rise of the far right frightened him, he was flooded with hateful and racist messages, and the Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into the abuse. He answered that he would keep speaking. Now the man who was targeted for naming the far right wants the office it is chasing.
The field is crowded. Public Sénat counts more than 30 declared or presumed candidates, from Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour on the far right to Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Tondelier on the left, with Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal in the center. To reach the ballot, Riner needs 500 endorsements from elected officials in at least 30 departments by March 12. The first round is April 18, 2027.
The hard part is the program. So far Riner has offered a mood and a slogan, and on pensions an outline that mixes the current pay-as-you-go system with means-testing. That is not yet a position on policing, housing or schools. One analyst called him “a blank page” with everything to prove, and he has never held office.
A candidate who refuses a side is easy to like and hard to hold to account. Black voters in France, and the Caribbean and African families elsewhere who watch its politics, are owed more than unity as a plan. Riner has until the ballot in April to say what he would do for them.
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