Brittany badminton championship, this weekend in Paimpol
A month ago, AL Saint Brieuc badminton made a splash at the Brittany Youth Championships by winning four gold medals and three silver. This weekend in Paimpol, it will be the senior level, which medalists Martin Bellot, Lily Gautier, Marco Marie and Maëlys Lemarchand are already experiencing during the season by filling the ranks of the N3 team. All aged 17 or under (Lily Gautier is 15), the desire to give them power is assumed: “We wanted to have the youngest team possible in N3, and above all, to have players trained with us”, testifies Anne -Gaëlle Depagne, coach at the club for 17 years.
To the European podium
And the Briochins are beginning to reap the benefits of this strategy, of which Bellot and Gautier will be the banners this weekend, accompanied by Benjamin Raud (17) and Léo Jouan (20)*. “It’s a generation that we have since chick, who grew up with us, recalls the president Stan Raud. They are now playing at a high level”. Evidenced by their recent results, which suggest that they will have their say in Paimpol. Lily Gautier won gold (women’s doubles), silver (singles) and bronze (mixed doubles) in the “France” youth, before collecting bronze in the “Europe” U15 (women’s doubles). As for Martin Bellot, “he is in the thick of it at the moment”, draws up the ex-coach who is always up to date. His two former protégés are part of the Hope Pole of Dinan, like Romance Depagne, absent this weekend. “We were a bridge to help them get there,” says the former coach. “We always have a good follow-up of their performance because the technical manager, Gurvan Le Scan, is a veteran of ours. We trained him as a player, then as a coach, ”explains Stan Raud. Proof, if it needed a new one, that the training in Saint-Brieuc shines in Brittany.
* Selection to which must be added Maëlys Lemarchand, Marco Marie, Axel Le Ny, Clara Dufresne and Jean Marie Derval, not trained at the club, in contention this weekend
