Abstract
This article offers a critical reading of Parisian municipal debates at thecrossroads of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to question common politicalrepresentations of sports. Specifically, it critiques the paradigm of modern sportsthrough the discourse articulated by locally elected officials. By drawing a cleanbreak in the continuity of time, the idea of modernity defines an era regarding apast whose complexity is outlined around simultaneously economic, industrial,social, and political values. Thus, during the “Belle Époque” broadly construed,the sporting imaginary of elected officials drew on those innovative codes andpowerful movements: the capital, the social, and the Republic—proof that from thevery beginning of their implementation in France, politicians understood sports asresolutely modern practices.