They swapped powder for grains of sand. Cold and snow for warmth and sun. While the majority of those qualified for the 2026 Winter Olympics were fine-tuning their preparation in the Olympic village, the French skicross team took flight. Direction Tenerife, the day after the opening ceremony in which they participated, for a big week of training.
The method is known. In 2014, during the Sochi Olympic Games, Blues coach Michel Lucatelli sent his flock to Türkiye just before the events. The result proved him right, with a hat-trick scored by Jean-Frédéric Chapuis, Arnaud Bovolenta and Jonathan Midol. “Going to do the opening ceremony when you discover the Games, it puts a certain pressure. Going back to Turkey to finish the preparation allowed us to get away from all this pressure,” the first confided to Le Dauphiné a few years later.
This success pushed the coach to try the experience again this year, just changing destination to head to the Canaries. “We skied a lot in December and January, between the World Cups and training,” explains the man we nickname Mitch on the olympics.com website. So we had a certain amount of training and racing and we felt that it was more than enough in terms of amount of skiing. »
Soon the Coinche Olympics?
Rest assured, the French team, led by Youri Duplessis-Kergomard and Marielle Berger-Sabbatel, did not only spend the week with their toes fanned out on the beaches of Tenerife. “It really felt good,” smiles Frenchwoman Jade Grillet-Aubert. It allowed me to train well physically, to recharge my batteries to get here fully and just want to go back. There, clearly, I really want it to attack there, it has to start! »
“We did a little bodybuilding work in the mornings to maintain ourselves, so the goal was to keep this shape at the muscular level,” explained Melvin Tchiknavorian. We did a lot of support work, we played padel, we did athletics type support sessions. And then we had completely related activities like aquatic activities, where we really cut off both the head and the body. »
It’s also an opportunity to strengthen ties already well established around a few board games. “We play a lot of coinche or card games that are easy to put in the suitcase,” smiles Anouck Errard on the French team website. Jade Grillet-Aubert is also waiting for “the Olympic Games of Coinche, because we are not bad”.
This short sequence in Tenerife was unanimously appreciated by the skiers, who escaped the popular craze of Milan-Cortina and the long days of waiting in the Olympic village. “We were in the sun every day, we bathed in swimsuits. It’s a chance to be able to do this in February, and we arrive there with a tenfold desire to go skiing and have a great race,” promises Terence Tchiknavorian.
The women’s entry into the competition is scheduled for this Friday, with a ranking round from 10 a.m. The men will continue the next day at the same time. The finals are scheduled for 1:10 p.m. with potentially several medals in sight.
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