Ugo Legrand at the World Judo Championships in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), August 28, 2013. VANDERLEI ALMEIDA / AFP
The lights of Paris 2024 attract more than one. Eight years after retiring, Ugo Legrand announced on Wednesday July 6 his intention to put on the kimono for a final challenge: the Olympic Games in the City of Light. The bronze medalist of the London Olympics (2012), in − 73 kg, returns at the age of 34, and proclaims his “want to take up a challenge […] almost impossible in the eyes of the general public, but which seems to me, quite accessible”In The team.
Read also (2015): Ugo Legrand bids farewell to the judo scene
From one Olympic deadline to another, Ugo Legrand has changed a lot. In 2015, less than a year from the Rio Olympics, the double world medalist (3rd in 2011 and 2nd in 2013) put an end to his career, ensuring that he no longer felt “capable of providing all these efforts on a daily basis”. Broken by the incessant chains, he threw in the towel at 26 years old. “When I stopped judo, I was in a state of disgust. I no longer had any desire to train or fight.explained the judoka on Wednesday, on the YouTube channel of the French Judo Federation (FFJ).
Eight years later, the one who has never quite cut ties with the tatami mats returns with a completely different state of mind, eager to“write history”. Established for a time in Los Angeles, the former judoka teaches his discipline, puts online a site for the sale of judo equipment and collaborates with the specialized magazine The Spirit of Judo. By his own admission, Ugo Legrand takes advantage “light-hearted” of a life filled with “new passions and skills”which replenish it.
Not the first athlete to return to service for the Games
A sufficiently regenerating period for this figure of tricolor judo, an outstanding technician, who had left a great void in French judo at the time of his retirement, to motivate himself to get back to work. Having rediscovered the pleasure of the practice, and “quite interesting feelings” since his return to France a few months earlier, the one who had nevertheless “mourns high-level sport” explains having heard the call of the Games.
If the tricolor candidates of the discipline are not lacking to play the Games at home, the category of the thirty-year-old does not have a headliner from the pedigree of Teddy Riner or Clarisse Agbegnenou. Ugo Legrand, who has not gained weight since his retirement, enjoys “always represent the less than 73 kg”. He knows, however, that two judokas will give him a hard time for the place of French number one, qualifying for the Olympics: Benjamin Axus (28 years old, French number one) and Joan-Benjamin Gaba (22 years old, French number three). It was during the French championships in November, in “his Norman stronghold” of Caen, that Ugo Legrand will rub shoulders with the French gratin. A competition where the Frenchman, despite an extensive record, has never won gold.
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2023-07-07 14:25:17
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