They attacked monuments of continental badminton, the Bulgarian sisters Gabriela and Stefani Stoeva, three-time reigning European champions (2018, 2021 and 2022), seeded No. 3 and 22nd in the world. But the Olympic form of Mulhouse’s Margot Lambert and Parisian Anne Tran, now qualified for their first Olympic Games in Paris this summer, gave them every hope this Sunday for the first final of their careers in a major competition on the international calendar, in the occurrence of the individual Euro 2024 which took place all this week in Saarbrücken.
“We’re going to have to give everything,” said the Ardéchoise from Red Star Mulhouse on Saturday afternoon after their semi-final won quite quietly in two sets, like their round of 16 and their quarter in the two previous rounds.
The three reigning French champions, 19th and seeded 2, actually gave everything to follow the example inspired by them the previous evening by the other Mulhousien Thom Gicquel and the Camblysienne Delphine Delrue, crowned in mixed, forever the first French champions of Europe and even winners of a major international competition.
Their ambition: to get out of the pools at the Games
They thus added a second European title to the tricolor basket by knocking off their pedestal those who had knocked them out last year in the semi-finals of the 2023 European Games in Poland, before winning them. The Alsaco-France duo won for the second time in five confrontations and therefore dethroned the triple holders of the scepter in three sets, after losing the first (16-21, 21-17, 21-11).
A victory with a taste of revenge for Anne Tran who, at Euro 2018 in Huelva (Spain), had, with Emilie Lefel, been soundly beaten by the Stoeva siblings in the final (12-21, 10-21). And proof that the Lambert/Tran pair will have no complexes at the end of July in Paris where they hope to get out of the groups to reach the quarter-finals.
2024-04-14 15:29:00
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