As part of the Jubilee year, the Vatican dedicated a weekend to athletes. During the introductory conference, "The Drive of Hope", Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, and Thomas Bach, President of the IOC (International Olympic Committee), emphasized how sport is today a place of hope and peace. They reminded us that at the Paris Games, athletes from warring countries competed against each other in a true spirit of fraternity.\nTo begin the Jubilee pilgrimage to the Holy Door, the Olympic Cross was symbolically handed to Athletica Vaticana by Bishop Gobilliard, the sports referent of the Conference of Bishops of France, and the Holy Games delegation represented by Aurélien Diesse (Olympic judo champion in Paris 2024) and Mathias Dantin (a young rugby player who became paraplegic). The IOC President, just days before the end of his term, then carried it through the Holy Door: a strong symbol to remind that sport carries a significant stake in world peace.\nDuring the Jubilee mass, Pope Leo XIV reminded everyone that sport "reflects the beauty of God" and "can help us meet the Trinitarian God because it requires a movement from oneself to others". Drawing on Jesus, who is "God's true athlete because he conquered the world not by force, but by the fidelity of his love", he invited athletes to "give themselves to others — for their growth, for supporters, for their loved ones, for trainers, for collaborators, for the public, even for opponents".\nPope Leo, an avid athlete himself, also recalled that "in the lives of many saints of our time, sport played an important role, either as a personal practice or as a means of evangelization." He urged athletes to rely on these figures, like Pier Giorgio Frassati who will be canonized on September 7: "no one is born a champion, no one is born a saint. It is daily training in love that brings us closer to the ultimate victory and enables us to work towards building a new world."