In French Election, Centrists Eye a Judo Star and a Central Banker

When Teddy Riner, a judo champion and one of France’s most popular athletes, announced this week that he would run for president, it was less a game changer than a welcome diversion.For all of his appeal, Mr.

Riner, 37, is unlikely to win the race to replace President Emmanuel Macron next spring.Yet his quixotic candidacy reveals a hard truth about France’s presidential campaign.Five months before voters go to the polls, many are eager, even desperate, for a fresh face to upend a race that looks increasingly as if it’s on a glide path to the election of France’s first far-right government since World War II.The main far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, has held a commanding lead over all her rivals for months — a lead that has only been reinforced by weeks of protests, marred by violence, that have shaken France.

The most prominent center-right candidate, Édouard Philippe, has faded in the polls as the unrest has sharpened the appeal of far-right calls for law and order and left-wing calls for social justice.Another beneficiary of the upheaval is a far-left firebrand, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who now appears to be the likeliest candidate to advance into a second round against Ms.Le Pen in France’s two-round system.

As things currently stand, French voters would be confronted with a choice between two poles of the political spectrum.Centrist voters are “afraid of being confronted with a duel between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” said Jean-Daniel Lévy, deputy director of Toluna France, a polling firm.These voters, he said, are an “orphan electorate,” lacking an inspiring candidate, and are “still looking for someone.”Raphaël LLorca, an analyst at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, a left-leaning research group in Paris, said the search for a white knight showed “the panic of the centrist bloc.” He added, “It is clear that the election is slipping away from them.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable Ja...