In close collaboration with the other State services, the tricolour sporting movement, businesses and territories, the sports ambassador takes on a role of development, coordination and representation with regard to sports diplomacy. Based in Paris, he travels abroad regularly to develop international cooperation alongside major sporting events, or to stand up for French positions within international forums.
What is the role of a sports ambassador?
The sports ambassador’s missions are based around 3 priorities:
- mobilizing the entire diplomatic network and the Ministry’s services internationally and on operational aspects of major sporting events in France, particularly the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympic & Paralympic Games and to this end representing the Ministry in interministerial coordination forums;
- continuing to develop international cooperation in the area of sport, paying particular attention to sport’s contribution to Sustainable Development Goals;
- strengthening France’s economic attractiveness and influence abroad, including by supporting the internationalization of French sports companies and promoting the French language in sports competitions.
Samuel Ducroquet has been sports ambassador since February 2023. A career diplomat, he joined the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs as an international civil volunteer at the Permanent Representation of France to the European Union in Brussels, and was then was appointed to the European Union Directorate at the French Foreign Ministry. Samuel Ducroquet was then political advisor and contact person for sports at the French Embassy in Qatar (2015-2018). But it was mainly his experience as sports advisor / Olympic attaché at the French Embassy in Tokyo (2018-2021) that enabled him to gain genuine expertise in the area of sports diplomacy, strengthened by his role of senior manager in charge of the dignitaries programme within the International Relations Directorate of the Paris 2024 Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games until January 2023.