The Reunion Judo League will host the Champions Route from August 20 to 28. Renowned judokas like Cyrille Maret, Marc Alexandre or Cathy Arnaud are expected on the island.
Six years after his last visit to Reunion, Cyrille Maret will be back on the island on August 20. The five-time French champion (-100 kg) In 2016, he hosted a small training session with a certain Laetitia Payet as part of the 5th edition of Champions Wednesday.
Freshly retired from competitive life, the bronze medalist at the Rio Olympics will return this time to Reunion as part of a group trip, called “Itinéraire des champions”, organized by the Réunion Judo League. “This is a promotional operation that will take place from August 20 to 28.recounts Bernard Laterrière, the president of the Reunion Judo League. The idea is to bring in current and past champions to relaunch the activity through promotional events.” Originally, this action was exclusively carried out in mainland France with a group of six judokas.
Present at the Dijon tournament last December, Bernard Laterrière questioned the FFJDA on the need to also organize such a project in the Dom-Tom to revive the practice there. In Reunion, more than a quarter of licensees have not returned to their clubs after two seasons under Covid (3,600 licensees before the crisis and 2,600 this year, editor’s note). “They finally took me at my word, laughs the manager. They gave us the direction to follow and we established the program.”
A dozen points
For this operation outside France, the number of participants has been increased to ten for this project, always with an equitable distribution between old and new champions. Among them, Cyrille Maret will therefore be part of the trip in the same way as the Saint-Paulois Guillaume Chaine, claimed loud and clear by the League. Marc Alexandre, the gold medalist at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, Guy Delvingt, champion of France in 1979, or even Catherine Arnaud, double world champion in 1987 and 1989, should also be included in the delegation. The name of Gévrise Emane, triple world champion and bronze medalist at the London Olympics, is also circulating but no confirmation has yet been made.
Supervised by Frédéric Lecanu, the delegation of champions will take the direction of the Open des Mascareignes (August 20-21) on arrival. “They will obviously not fight but will come to meet the judokascontinues Bernard Laterrière. Throughout their stay, they will animate various actions in particular by carrying out interventions in schools, sports sections of judo or during grouping of clubs. (three are scheduled in the South, West and Northeast).” In addition to promotional operations, several training sessions for managers, referees and teachers will also be on the menu of the visit.
Christopher Mermet
