"She was offered to wear a cap during the paradealong the Seine, which she accepted”, the French Olympic Committee said.

"In the end we have found an agreement so that she can take part in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games,’ the 26-year-old athlete said on her Instagram account, four days after lamenting not being able to go because she was wearing “a headscarf”.

"She was offered to wear a cap during the parade along the Seine, which she accepted”, the French Olympic Committee said after talks involving the athletics federation, the sports ministry and Berluti, the company that manufactures the sports equipment.

The issue is very sensitive in France. Under the principle of secularism, civil servants and public representatives in general must observe ‘strict neutrality’ and not express their religious or political convictions. The French sports minister, Amelie Oudea-Castera, had expressed interest on Wednesday in Sounkamba Sylla's participation in the opening ceremony, but in keeping with this ‘principle of neutrality’.

And in a note last month, the ministry insisted that "during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the wearing of religious signs or clothing is forbidden for members of the French delegation, in accordance with the principle of neutrality".

The guideline applies only to French athletes, and in practice targets women of the Muslim faith who wear the veil. The only one concerned in the French delegation seems to be Sounkamba Sylla, a 4 x 400m relay runner.

It is not the first time that the issue has arisen with the relay runner, who ran with a headscarf at the 2023 World Championships, but had to give it up last June at the European Athletics Championships in Rome, where she wore a blue cap. In a recent report, Amnesty International called the ban on French women wearing headscarves during the Games a ‘discriminatory’ measure.