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.”