The Frenchman, who has been President of the International Cycling Union (UCI) since 2013, is devoted to cycling. Now he wants to don the yellow jersey of IOC.
David Lappartient, 51, is a cycling man. He was born in Pontivy, France, and took up regional club cycling as a teenager, riding steadily for about 20 years, but never went professional.
In 1998, he both graduated from the École Spéciale des Travaux Publics (ESTP) in Paris, earning a degree in engineering, and founded Cabinet Geo Bretagne Sub, a firm of surveyors. He managed this firm for the next nine years, before pivoting from the lay of the land to the administration of its government.
In 2008, he was elected Mayor of Sarzeau, a seaside town of about 9,000 souls near a castle that the old Dukes of Brittany liked to use as a hunting lodge. He governed as a member of the Union pour un Movement Populaire (UMP), on the center-right. (President Nicolas Sarkozy founded an offshoot, Les Républicains, in 2002.)
Lappartient pleased as mayor, winning comfortable, first-round victories in his second and third elections (2014 and 2020). Then as now he spoke the language of sustainable development, and in policy sought to improve the town’s infrastructure and boost tourism while preserving the beaches and wetlands.
While holding office, Lappartient was a member of no fewer than three cycling bodies. By 2005 he had already secured a seat on the Management Committee of the International Cycling Union (UCI), the sport’s worldwide governing body. His mayoral term coincides almost exactly with his presidency of the French Cycling Association (2009-21), and during those years (2013-17) he served in addition as President of the European Cycling Union (UEC).
Within UCI, he was President of the Professional Cycling Council (PCC), and in 2013 he was elected Vice President of the whole body. The presidency followed in 2017, in another handily won election – his opponent, Brian Cookson, received eight votes to Lappartient’s 37.
In December 2021, Lappartient resigned as mayor and devoted himself to the true love he’d never really left, cycling. He is now serving his second term as UCI president. Once this term expires – in September, six months after the forthcoming IOC election – he will be eligible for a third.
As UCI’s President, he has been keen to make cycling into a genuine worldwide sport, beyond the traditional continents of Europe and North America. To this end he has sought to buoy national federations and has extended a welcome to the Chinese. Early on (2017) he met with Wang Jianlin, founder and Chairman of the Wanda Group, a conglomerate with many high-profile sports properties (Atlético Madrid, World Triathlon Corporation) and sponsorships (FIFA) that also organizes a cycling meet, the Tour of Guangxi.
Another early concern of Lappartient’s has been doping. In particular, he has sought a ban on corticosteroids, which the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) partially implemented in January 2022, when it banned a class of such drugs: glucocorticoids. Lappartient has sat on the WADA’s Foundation Board since 2019.
Under Lappartient’s presidency the UCI has held the first Cycling World Championships (2023), in which a variety of disciplines (track, road, downhill, BMX, para-, etc.) are crammed into 11 days, and the first world championships for snow-bike (2024). The UCI has also under Lappartient been working to make cyclocross into an Olympic sport – for the Winter Games.
Lappartient was elected to the IOC for an eight-year term in February 2022 in his capacity as UCI President. He is Chairman of the IOC’s Esports and Gaming Liaison Group, and thus helped negotiate a 12-year deal with Saudi Arabia for the Olympic Esports Games, scheduled to begin this year.
He became President of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF) in 2023, defeating his opponent 36 votes to eight.
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