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For twenty years, France’s antidiscrimination legislation has prohibited, among other things, age discrimination in the hiring of new employees. However, discrimination on the basis of “being too old” remains a social reality. The average age of sales staff in large, so-called “sporting” goods outlets is low, making them an appropriate terrain for empirical research. Through a thematic analysis of the content of thirty employment advertisements and twenty semi-structured interviews with “recruiters,” we highlight the way in which these advertisements exercise a preemptive stigmatization of, and discrimination against, the hiring of older workers. The article shows that the formal channels of recruitment are in fact a continuation of a prior selection process instigated by the employers, indirectly, and remotely. The two main discursive methods deployed for this purpose are the use of the informal “tu,” which departs from the standard form of address in French public documentation, and the frequent and ambiguous use of sporting metaphors: “practice,” “passion,” and so forth.