Joris Daudet won his third BMX Racing world championship title on Saturday in Rock Hill, United States. At the Paris Olympics, for which he should be selected, the Frenchman will try to erase the painful memory of the Tokyo Games, from which France left empty-handed in the discipline in 2020.
Published on: 05/19/2024 – 1:37 p.m.
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A good omen for the Olympics. Frenchman Joris Daudet became BMX Racing world champion on Saturday May 18 in Rock Hill, United States, just over two months before the opening of the Games in Paris.
This is the third world title for Daudet, 33, after those of 2011 and 2016. Another Frenchman, Sylvain André, took third place.
“I knew I could do it, despite a complicated start to the season. It represents so many hours of work for a race of barely thirty seconds. It’s a beautiful day,” said Daudet, who has just returned of a fractured clavicle.
Romain Mahieu eliminated in the semi-finals
The Frenchman, star of his discipline and who built a large part of his career in the United States, flew over the competition by winning his quarter-final, his semi-final and the final on Saturday.
He succeeds his compatriot Romain Mahieu, winner last year in Glasgow, where the Blues achieved a historic treble, and who was eliminated this time in the semi-finals.
Also read: Romain Mahieu and Saya Sakakibara, the couple of BMX champions in search of gold
Daudet, André and Mahieu should be the three French people selected to compete for medals in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines during the Paris Olympics on August 2. France is, among men, the world’s leading nation in this sport.
The only one competing among the women, Axelle Étienne fell on Saturday in the quarter-finals by hitting a protective cushion.
For the men, there were six at the start, five in the quarter-finals, four in the semi-finals and two in the final, for two medals in the end, including the best.
In Paris, they will be keen to erase the disillusionment of the Tokyo Games, where they were three in the final for zero medals at the end.
In 2016 too, things went badly, particularly for Joris Daudet, who had just won the world title three months earlier but was eliminated by a fall in the quarter-finals.
While Daudet and Mahieu, who dominate BMX, practically had their ticket in their pocket even before these Worlds, Sylvain André, 2018 world champion, undoubtedly definitively validated his selection thanks to his bronze medal on Saturday.
With AFP
