"Putting athletes at the centre of the Games" - or Championships - has become a mantra for bidding cities in recent years. It sounds like a good idea. An unexceptionable idea. And if, at the end of the day, it amounts to no more than ensuring the Athletes’ Village is within easy reach of the track, or the swimming pool, or the shooting range (unlikely) or the rowing venue (hugely unlikely) - then great.

But there can be a bit more to it than that.

As was demonstrated this week at INSEP, the French elite sports academy situated a short - but not swift - drive east of Paris city centre in the middle of the Forest of Vincennes.

Somewhere in that Forest, perhaps, is the small cat belonging to France’s world 800 metres champion Pierre-Ambroise Bosse, who had shown off his pet after last year’s International Association of Athletics Federations Diamond League meeting in Paris, only to report on the eve of this year’s meeting that his erstwhile furry friend had deserted him and was now most likely roaming the nearby streets in Vincennes.

But I digress - even if I do still wonder about Bosse’s cat. He’s called Rabs, in case you’re ever passing that way…

In the middle of that Forest, in the middle of INSEP, in the middle of a large hall, ten tables were set up to accommodate around 60 talented French athletes – some young enough to have serious prospects of competing at the 2024 home Olympics, and some, such as world pole vault record holder Renaud Lavillenie, old enough to have serious prospects of competing at the 2024 home Games.

Nearly two months after the International Olympic Committee Session in Lima confirmed that Paris would host 2024 and - everybody leaves with a party bag - Los Angeles would host 2028, the first action of consequence by the Paris 2024 team was to consult with athletes over how they might best contribute to the organising of those Games.

For a bid that has always emphasised, yes, that athletes would be at the centre of the Games, it was a case of delivering a first instalment of what it had promised.

Who better to describe what was going on than the supernaturally bright-eyed and bushy-tailed former athlete Tony Estanguet, three times an Olympic C1 canoe gold medallist and now, among a myriad of other things, President of Paris 2024?

"What a pleasure it is to be here with the athletes," he said. Again, a phrase one hears often, usually uttered by some middle-aged committee man but, in this case, ringing true.

"It is so important for us to continue to engage in the athlete community because they are so important to the success of the Paris 2024 Games.

"For me on the journey of the bid from the beginning to the end I always counted on the support of the athletes.

"For the new phase we wanted to implement the same recipe of success. The idea is to follow the athletes, to start the journey of the Paris 2024 Organising Committee."

Many of the athletes who were still brainstorming over topics including the structure and mission of the future Athletes' Commission within the Organising Committee and the format of the Paris 2024 Ambassadors’ Programme were doing so on very familiar territory. 

INSEP came into being in 1975. Since then this state-funded facility has produced a succession of athletes who have achieved at the highest levels - including judoka Teddy Riner, sprinter Marie-Jose Perec and, indeed, Estanguet.

The rise in standards has been measured in medals. At last year’s Rio Olympics, France won 42 medals – with exactly half of them contributed by past or present incumbents of INSEP.

The target for Tokyo 2020 has not just increased in terms of the overall number of medals – there will now be, it is reported, a sharpening focus on the earning of gold medals, with Paris 2024 very much in mind.

Ultimately, regardless of how many positive initiatives put forward or carried out by willing sportsmen and women, these are the statistics upon which France’s athletes are likely to be judged in seven years’ time.

Lavillenie, of course, has already contributed more than his fair share of gold, silver and bronze to the cause of French sport. At 31, the world pole vault record holder - who won Olympic gold at London 2012 and silver at Rio 2016 - is holding doggedly to the idea that he will still be around to compete at his home Games, when he will be rising 38.

But he made it clear that he also envisaged playing a significant role in the Paris 2024 Organising Committee that will be formally established early next year for the long haul of delivering Olympic promises.

Lavillenie is already familiar with a joint competing/organising role, having successfully promoted the All Star Perche meeting in his home town of Clermont-Ferrand for the last two years.

"I am a meeting organiser myself, so I have a good point of view from inside and outside, so that could be something interesting," he added.

When I asked him how he got on with Estanguet, he smiled.

"The funny thing was that at the London 2012 Games I took over his room in the Athletes’ Village, because he was doing his event at the beginning of the Olympics and I was competing at the end," he said.

"So he gave me his room and he left some things but it put some pressure on me because of course he won gold…"

Lavillenie rose to that challenge, and gives every sign of being ready to do the same to the still far from fully formed requirements that Paris 2024 will make of him.

Other successful Olympic bidders, of course, have made good use of former competitors in the delivering of their Games. I seem to recall that Sebastian Coe did quite a bit for the London 2012 Games, for instance. As did former Olympic hockey goalkeeper David Luckes and former junior Wimbledon champion Debbie Jevans.

But experienced Olympic observers reckon no one has set about the task of involving and including athletes in Games delivery in quite such a dedicated fashion as Paris 2024.

As applications pour in from all over the country, and all over the world, for positions in the Organising Committee – which will start up at a bid level of around 70 people and grow to beyond 4,000 as the Games become imminent, the word is that Estanguet wants there to be a dedicated section on the standard form to indicate experience as a past or present athlete. A tick in that box will fast track the application to consideration.

Estanguet is fervent as he puts the case for athlete involvement: "Because they know what the Games are about. They know this country. And they have the passion to engage the population in this success."

So had anyone come up with any bright ideas thus far? The response was immediate:

"One of the first ideas I heard at today’s meeting was that athletes want to be more involved in their own cities. They don’t all come from Paris. They are all stars in their own cities and they can enthuse the population with the idea of the Games. And this is exactly what we want.”

And that, you can be sure, is exactly what Paris 2024 is going to get…