European Championships in Saarbrücken (Germany)
This first title of European champion makes you enter the history of French badminton…
It’s a feeling of pride, of relief to find victory and strong moments after complicated passages. This victory represents a lot of happiness. I felt a lot of emotions.
You are the first and others could follow this Sunday with the finals of Toma Junior Popov and the Tran-Lambert women’s pair.
Before our match, Tomi (Toma Junior Popov) beat Axelsen, the world number one. These results give emulation. We feel that the team is progressing. It’s been a great week. And winning leads to winning. This is our first title, the first for French badminton. It will lead to others, that’s for sure. We are on the right path. Our generation is going to break records. We had made victories among juniors commonplace. The goal is to do this also among the seniors.
Thom Gicquel (left) and Delphine Delrue, European mixed doubles champions. (Photo Yohan Nonotte/Badmintonphoto)
We were less stressed. We should have won the first one but we saw ourselves winning too quickly. There, we remained more concentrated, calmer. We didn’t think about it, we were calm. The fact of having had complicated times recently allowed us to be demanding and to fight until the end.
What difficult times do you think about?
The entire last year has not been easy. Since the departure of our coaches two years ago, we have had staff problems. We had a coach who didn’t come, then one who wasn’t really there. It’s good again because we managed to find a Danish coach who is committed to us. But for a while, we barely had anyone with us. It didn’t work.
How did you approach these European Championships?
It wasn’t our best start to the season, we lost two finals and we were no longer the top Europeans in the world rankings (the Christiansen-Boje pair, finalists, were). But the last month was better, confidence had returned. We were in good shape, we had played well during the European tour. In training, it was better. We arrived calmly. But the European Championships are always stressful so this victory does a lot of good.
We can go on vacation with peace of mind, then calmly begin our preparation with full confidence. It’s very cool !
Three months before the Olympic Games, it’s very positive…
We can go on vacation with peace of mind, then calmly begin our preparation with full confidence. It’s very cool ! The Olympic qualification was very long (May 1, 2023 – April 30, 2024). But it is acquired (subject to validation by the Olympic Selection Advisory Commission).
What will your program be?
We have two weeks of vacation then we will prepare for Insep. We should participate in two tournaments, in Singapore (May 28-June 2) and Indonesia (June 4-9). With the objective of obtaining seeded status which is a huge advantage (the first eight qualified are; the Gicquel-Delrue pair is currently 13th). It’s still possible but it will take good results.
Rostrenoise Xuefei Qi is the best Frenchwoman in the ranking for Olympic qualification and will therefore participate in her second Olympic Games in Paris.
2024-04-14 12:01:41
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