Teddy Riner, the most decorated judoka in French history, declared on Monday that he will stand for the French presidency at next spring’s election, with less than six months to go before the vote.
Riner, 37, announced his candidacy in an interview with the daily Le Parisien and in a video posted on X, the Daily Mirror reported, citing Euronews. He said he was neither “left nor right-wing” and wanted to be a candidate of unity.
“France does not need a professional politician who lectures and bickers all day. It needs common sense, goodness and a state that puts things as they should be.”
Riner said he expected to be called “crazy” for running without a political career or the “right connections” behind him. “If refusing to bow to pressure and refusing to accept chaos makes me crazy, then yes, I am completely crazy,” he said, adding: “My life hasn’t been spent behind a desk. Fighting has always been a part of who I am. I know what it’s like to struggle, to fall, and to get back up, time and time again.”
He is not retiring
Unusually for a presidential candidate, Riner does not intend to stop competing. He said he still hopes to contest the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, if the public will let him do both.
He won the heavyweight title at the 2012, 2016 and 2024 Olympics and took mixed team gold at the 2020 and 2024 Games, for five Olympic golds in total, alongside 11 world titles.
The field he is entering
Riner would not be the first French judoka to move into politics: David Douillet was elected to parliament in 2009 and served as sports minister from September 2011 to May 2012.
The contest he joins is, on current polling, not close. An IFOP poll for broadcaster LCI, conducted from 27 to 29 October, put the far-right National Rally’s Marine Le Pen ahead on 36 percent, followed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the hard-left France Unbowed on an estimated 17.6 percent. The election is due in the spring, at the end of President Emmanuel Macron’s term; Hiru News reports the two rounds are scheduled for April and May.
Hiru, citing The Guardian, notes that analysts are divided on Riner’s prospects given his lack of political experience and the absence of a party behind him.
Not reported
Neither filing states what platform Riner intends to run on beyond the language of unity and common sense, whether he will seek a party endorsement or stand as an independent, or how he expects to collect the 500 elected sponsors a French presidential candidate requires. There is no reaction from existing candidates or from the French Judo Federation, and no indication of how a campaign would be reconciled in practice with training for 2028.
