At 28, Reims table tennis player Lucas Créange is preparing to participate in the Tokyo Paralympic Games, which will take place from August 24 to September 5. Whoever is today the 4th player in the world in adapted table tennis hopes to win the gold medal. He is working hard on it.
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His great strength is his endurance … Watching Rémois Lucas Créange, 28, train on this day of March 2021 at the Metz club, in Moselle, we say to ourselves that nothing can stop him. Ranked 4th in the world in adapted table tennis, he returns and returns all the balls that his opponent, a professional player, serves him. The pace is frantic, not knowing where to turn. But Lucas Créange knows the score he has to play here like the back of his wrist: “We do scales, repetition exercises, he explains. It is important to do repetitions in training so that it is natural in a match “.
And it is true that the dexterity of the young Marnais seems devoid of effort, for the neophytes who watch him train. However, Lucas Créange has hours and hours of work to his credit, he who evolves in the adapted sport category, reserved for athletes with psychic or mental disabilities. A perseverance that Loïc Belguise, sports director of Metz table tennis, considers to be one of his greatest strengths: “He can train for five or six hours, then go running for an hour behind and do that seven days a week. He’s really a work force, and he’s also an example. “ Moreover, within the Moselle club, an agreement was signed last year with the appropriate sports federation so that the young table tennis player, in his preparation for the Paralympic Games, can face players of the highest levels. Lucas Créange therefore trains with his able-bodied colleagues. Throughout the year, he faces them in this category. Links are created and everyone learns a lot.
He has a rather unusual game, so we can work on new things, and that’s really good. Afterwards, when you practice with him, you really have to learn to stay calm, because his playing system can be frustrating!
Damien Llorca in blue, and Lucas Créange, in red. The latter trains at the table tennis club in Metz, in Moselle, to prepare for the Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
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© France televisions / Valentin Cruard
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His playing, all in reverse, allows to break the rhythm of the exchange and to integrate variations, to change the effects. Particularly defensive, he sometimes destabilizes his opponents. “This brings added value to the training center to work on this type of game which is completely different. So everyone is a winner”, notes Loïc Belguise. This game even led Lucas Créange to the best places in the competitions. In 2016, at the Paralympic Games in Rio, he led the battle to the adapted table tennis quarterfinals. This year, for the Tokyo Paralympic Games, which will take place from August 21 to September 5, 2021, he intends to go further and is aiming for the gold medal.
I will go there with a lot of ambition. My goal is to win the Games or at least make the bronze or silver medal. But winning the Games is a childhood dream, as they say!
In the meantime, the Rémois continues to work, to touch this Olympic dream. He therefore shares his life between the tables of Reims, Poitiers – where the France pole of adapted sport is located – and Metz, where he goes every two weeks, randomly finding his colleagues, like him, in situation. handicap. “This is an opportunity to discuss away from the table, to broach different subjects, and I find that really very nice, he smiles behind his mask. It is important for the cohesion of the group. Usually, we cross paths in international competitions, except that there, with the covid period, we haven’t done one for a long time “.
Coordination, but also tactics to gain points thanks to his game system, Lucas Créange still has a few points to work on … So, until the day of take-off for Japan, he fully intends to test his endurance and train without release, with gold for horizon, why not, but above all what if “pretty archipelago”, that he has “really looking forward to discovering” …
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