Serge Blanco, rugby genius however new to politics, units out to assault Biarritz city corridor | EUROtoday

Behind his Formica counter, Dominique Hirigoyen is again on responsibility. Rotary phone to his left and huge business scales to his proper, the septuagenarian savors the newfound animation. Three years after closing, its grocery bar serves as marketing campaign headquarters for the native child. Serge Blanco, 67, is working for mayor of Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). We ought to by no means depart Saint-Martin, this district on the entrance to the town. The French rugby legend labored on all of it his life. “I started with football on this field opposite, he says. I had to take a test in Nantes. I was 14… I never went there. Impossible to leave my mother. » Nor Biarritz. “Caracas” stays a line on a civil standing, that of his delivery to a Venezuelan policeman father who died earlier than he was 2 years previous and to this Basque mom, Odile Blanco.

With unfailing loyalty to Olympic Biarritz (BO) between 1975 and 1992, Serge Blanco was by no means rewarded with a French champion title together with his membership when he performed there. Rugby, then again, will supply the again of the French XV a gleaming social elevate, in addition to with the assistance of Serge Kampf, founding father of the Capgemini firm. Thanks to this pal, admirer and mentor, the Dassault fitter will turn into a profitable entrepreneur after his sporting profession, with a thalassotherapy middle in Hendaye and his clothes model. His identify nonetheless on the head of the gondola.

There is a Blanco paradox. A superb soloist on the sphere, he by no means forgets to recite the collective catechism pricey to rugby: “I have always taken care of others. In my sport, we are nothing without them. And that’s what I want to do for my city. » Serge Blanco could have rushed into the political gap well before. “We’ve been saying for thirty years that he’s going to run.”smiles his marketing campaign supervisor, Peio Abeberry. In 1989, he declined a spot on the listing of the Gaullist mayor – and former worldwide referee – Bernard Marie.

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