It’s a day that could have ended early, very early, in the cool morning of the Pierre-de-Coubertin stadium in Paris. The competition would then have turned frosty for the French foil team, but that’s not what they wanted this Sunday, so they knew how to slowly increase the temperature to end up catching fire against Hungary which had so long extinct, to end with a more than comforting bronze medal.
Before, there had been this almost anonymous round of 16 and everything had gone wrong for the collective coached by Emeric Clos. His group entered the competition without its leader, Enzo Lefort, who suffered a knee injury on Saturday during the individual competition. A double-edged challenge for everyone, the opportunity to prove collective strength, like the risk of collapsing without your number one. And it was when they were on the slope of the second scenario, the one which could have plunged them into questioning six months before the Games, where they will arrive with the label of reigning Olympic champion, that the alchemy took hold.
Pauty decisive
“We started by falling back into our mistakes, that is to say, shooting so as not to lose,” describes Clos. And when you do that against Hungary… At one point, there was a shooter who understood that he had to take hits, and it was on the last relay! There, Max was stratospheric! » Max is Maxime Pauty, who joined the team thanks to Lefort’s withdrawal. He should not have been there, despite his quarter-final the day before, the best French result, because the team had won the last World Cup in Japan in December without him.
Clos had not held him back, he had not appreciated his behavior during the previous test. Pauty came back, and he responded. “At the start of the match against Hungary, we didn’t shoot well, me first, I had two very bad relays,” admits the gold medalist from the Toyko Olympics. Fortunately, I have experience and I know that you just have to say “let’s move on”. It was 40-33 for the other, I knew he had a game where I could ignite the match. »
He then stepped into the shoes of the finisher, this very particular role in the team event, assumed in recent years by Lefort, where you have to finish the work of your team and sometimes reverse compromised situations. “When you are led like that,” he tries to describe, “there is intensity, but less stress, because we have nothing to lose. There was no despair either, because desperation makes you do anything. You tell yourself that you have to let go of your actions completely. It’s a lot of concentration and a killer instinct too, to stay tough when the score gets tight. Where it gets hard is when you’re stuck again. There, the stress mounts and you must not give up, otherwise you have done all this for nothing. »
Unrecognizable Savin
The experience in his club, Issy Mousquetaires, where he was a finisher to win French and European team championship titles was useful. “I was happy, I told myself that at least once in my life I would have experienced a comeback like that! It’s a great moment, it made me love it! », he rejoiced. And his coach had a smile, too. “Max carried us, in this not easy role. And I know today that I have several possible finishers in the group,” said Clos.
For the coach, this bronze without Lefort will have been rich in lessons. His less experienced elements will have managed to overcome this tension which had inhibited them the day before during the individual event, where the challenge of qualifying for the Olympics at home could have paralyzed some, like the young (23 year old) Rafael Savin , promising 11th in the world eliminated as soon as he entered the fray on Saturday. “When they are in teams, everything they do is for others. They fight for others, and mentally they don’t have the same approach at all, Clos diagnoses. A guy like Raf’, when you see him shooting in this team event, he’s not the same person as in the individual event, in the aggressiveness, in the intentions, in the impacts he makes. Because he wants to help the team and he does it for the group. They miss it individually, where they must have the same attitude. They still have difficulty doing it…”
A collective to be formed for the Games
This letting go and the confidence born from the victory against Hungary (45-43) allowed the Blues to easily dominate Germany in the quarterfinals (45-25). It was not enough against Japan, reigning world champion, in the half (43-45), but in the match for third place, against the always formidable Italy, the French regained their cohesion (45-32) . “It was our match that impressed me the most of the day,” notes Pauty. I thought we were going to take a beating, because the matches for third place against them, we always have difficulty. Beating them so widely is not easy. »
Pauty talks about the support of the public, which helped, but also the appetite of Savin and Maximilien Chastanet, who were competing in this team competition for the first time. “They had an extra grinta!” », he judges. And even the veteran of the group, Julien Mertine (35 years old), Olympic champion in Tokyo and replacement from the quarter-finals, played his role, having the lucidity to tell his coach, who hesitated to bring him into the semi-final , that the team was functioning well in the configuration it had there. “Today, I can count on five or six guys for the team event, that’s a plus! », Satisfied Clos. Before smiling: “Now they will have to fight to be part of the team, because that is no longer my responsibility! » The group will still have one team event before the Olympics to get involved in the collective. In Cairo, at the end of February, places will be expensive.
2024-01-14 19:14:24
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