The road to qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics is still long, but the Blues are clinging to this dream of traveling to Japan. The French men’s team, led in particular by Antoine Eïto (Le Mans), is guaranteed to play the quarter-finals of the TQO, organized in Graz (Austria), even before negotiating the last match of its group against Qatar.
If Slovenia’s surprise defeat against the Dominican Republic (17-21) formalized the qualifying tricolor, the Blues had given themselves one more chance by dominating the Philippines for their first match of the day.
A meeting that took a long time to settle. Dominique Gentil and his family, however, widened the gap but the revolt of their opponents took place in the last two minutes. In vain, since the French won on the wire (15-14), after a three-point basket (which is worth two points in 3×3) at the buzzer of their vis-à-vis. Two hours later, they crushed Qatar in their last group match (21-10) to finish unbeaten, for their best performance of the tournament.
The quarter-finals will take place on Sunday and the Blues will face either Mongolia, Brazil, Poland, the Czech Republic or Turkey. As a reminder, only the two finalists as well as the winner of the match for third place will stamp their ticket for the Games.
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