EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France | The 2024 Paris Olympics are officially one year away as the Games are set to begin on July 26 next year. Fittingly, the LPGA Tour is making its annual stop in France this week for the fourth major championship of the 2023 season, The Amundi Evian Championship, and the French legion has expressed an abundance of pride in the opportunity that's been given to their country.
Celine Boutier, the winningest French player in LPGA Tour history, has been waiting for the Games in Paris since the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. She grew up playing Golf National, practicing at the venue when she was a part of the French Golf Federation in her youth, and is super excited to see France become the center of the global sporting world, even if it's only for a few weeks.
"The Olympic Games in Japan was already such an incredible experience for me, and to be able to experience that in my home country would be pretty incredible," said the three-time LPGA Tour winner. "I feel also very lucky because I know the course where it will be played at, so I feel like I'm really looking forward to it. I am trying not to stress out about it too much. I think overall it's going to be a very positive experience."
Pauline Roussin was an avid fan of the Olympics growing up. The Orcieres 1850, France native did Judo, a type of Japanese martial arts, as a child and vividly remembers watching those athletes compete in the Games throughout the years. While she's unsure whether or not she will qualify for Paris in 2024, Roussin is looking forward to seeing France host the Olympics and hopes that her homeland will knock it out of the park when the time comes for the event to begin.
"I think it's great. I hope we're going to do a good job and make a memorable week, weeks for a lot of athletes," said Roussin. "I honestly can't wait for it. It's exciting and hopefully, I can make it to the team and represent France for that week. But yeah, it's just amazing."
She also hopes this will help highlight France's propensity for athletics and show a side of French culture that some may have never seen before. "It's a good way of trying to prove that we can have some sort of athletic culture," Roussin said. "I hope that we can do a good job and make it where there are more compliments than critiques. It's a good challenge definitely because we don't have the infrastructure for that kind of thing and they're building everything which is amazing.
"And for golf, the golf course, I think it is going to be great. It's going to be a good challenge and it's exciting."
Perrine Delacour, another of the four French players in the field at this week's Amundi Evian Championship, competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics alongside Boutier and knows from experience how incredible the Games can be for both competitors and fans. She also takes a lot of pride in being able to represent her country in Japan a few years ago and hopes that others will enjoy the opportunity just as much as she did back then. "Just thinking about being an Olympian is an awesome memory," said Delacour. "Having the Olympics in France is awesome! It's going to be a great memory for everyone."
For now, though, Boutier, Roussin and Delacour will focus on the task at hand, and each looks to become the first player from France to win The Amundi Evian Championship. But it might be hard not to let their minds wander ahead to next summer when they'll have a chance to be back in their home country in just 365 days, draped in the Tricolore and passionately competing to bring a gold medal back to France in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
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