Expected less than a year before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the French delegation failed at the World Championships in Budapest.
It is an understatement to say that France has not left its mark on the 2023 World Athletics Championships. In Budapest, the French delegation moved forward ambitiously less than a year before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where it hopes to see the Stade de France vibrate in front of local exploits. In the end, she came close to the worst result in her history. There had been no medals in 1983 and 1993. In another year ending with a “3”, the Blues avoided zero points by winning a gem in Hungary at the last minute. This one is set with silver.
In the men’s 4x400m relay, Ludvy Vaillant, Gilles Biron, David Sombé and Téo Andant took 2nd place with the French record at stake (2’58″45). The four French people thus took on the role of saviors like Kevin Mayer in the decathlon at the 2022 Worlds in Eugene. In Budapest, there were only eight finalist places, not far from equaling the worst performances of 1983 and 2019 (6). There were 56 athletes entered individually: only 10 achieved their best performance of the season, six of whom improved their personal best (like the torchbearers and Alice Finot, 5th in the 3000 m steeplechase).
Mayer can’t take on everything
11 months before the Olympic high mass at home, it is obviously not particularly promising for French athletes. “The results are not good,” underlined the director of high performance, Romain Barras. My biggest disappointment is the inability of the majority of athletes to transcend themselves on the big day, by beating their personal best, their best score of the season or by finishing in a better place. “We had a generational gap in 2018 that, little by little, we are trying to fill,” analyzed André Giraud, the president of the French Federation. In Budapest, there was a desire to bring as many young people as possible so that they could become more experienced. Some had their best performance, we can’t blame them. And others missed out. It’s true that the results are not up to what we could have hoped for given our potential, even if no athlete was ranked in the top three in the world at the start of the championship. » Spearhead of the Blues, Kevin Mayer had to give up. “At some point, I can’t live up to everyone’s expectations. I can’t bear to be the only one to win medals for the French team,” lamented the Frenchman who we hope to find at the top, in Saint-Denis in 2024.
2023-12-29 01:30:21
#Big #concern #France
