Before the French badminton championships in Caen (February 6-8, 2026), Christo Popov, French number 1 and seventh in the world, already three times individual (2020, 2022 and 2024) and doubles (2022, 2024 and 2025, with his brother Toma Junior), speaks.
Christo Popov, you have posted your best career world ranking, a month and a half after becoming the first Frenchman to win the 2025 World Tour Finals. Are you arriving at the French championships in the best shape of your career?
Maybe in terms of level but I don’t know, at the moment, if I’m in the best shape of my career. In any case, we train for it. Maybe I am once again, on paper, the favorite for the French championships. This was already the case when I won my titles…
What has changed in 2025 for you to make French badminton history?
I was in better shape, that is to say, better trained. We worked a bit harder after Paris 2024, especially physically and in terms of consistency. I was already top 32 in the world, I already had victories over top 10 in the world but it was at most one to three times a year. The goal was to succeed in stringing together these successes during a competition and over several tournaments.
So it’s no coincidence that this happened a little over a year after Paris 2024?
Yes, we trained a lot more, we were much more precise during the sessions. I was unable to participate in the singles Games. It was a big disappointment but it motivated me to push even more. Even though Los Angeles was still far away at that time, a lot of work had to be done in advance. This is what we managed to do and we try to continue because we must not stop. We aim to go very far….
