The handball tournaments are set to take place at the Pierre-Mauroy Stadium in the northern city, around 225 kilometres away from Paris' city centre.

"A high quality site where our Olympic champions will play with pleasure and pride," said Bana, as reported by Le Parisien.

"An athlete experience of these champions altered, with this total exclusion from Paris for them."

France won both the men's and women's handball gold medals at Tokyo 2020.

Bana feels that a sport that France perform so well in should be rewarded with the spotlight in a central location at its home games.

He suggests holding the preliminary rounds of the basketball tournaments at the Pierre-Mauroy Stadium, which also staged the 2015 European Championship, before moving the finals back to the Accor Hotel Arena in Paris.

This would allow the handball events to take place in the capital.

However, the International Basketball Federation is eager for the sport to stay in Paris as it claims there are technical problems with the air conditioning within the Lille arena.

The FFHB also suggested that badminton be moved away from La Porte de la Chapelle Arena but that was dismissed by the Paris 2024 Organising Committee as no existing venue has a ceiling high enough to accommodate the sport.

Allison Pineau of the French women's handball team has also expressed her disappointment with the decision to play the sport in Lille.

"It feels a little weird to think that we are going to be far from Paris, that we are not going to share the party in the same way as everyone else, so there is a lot of frustration," said Pineau.