Published on October 8, 2024 at 11:07 a.m. – updated on October 8, 2024 at 11:09 a.m. Aurélien Canot
Aside from their swimming careers, Maxime Grousset and Yohann Ndoye Brouard are already thinking about retraining. For six weeks, the two French pool champions will be on training at the Paris Est Val-de-Marne hospitals in Saint-Maurice as part of their second year of physiotherapy school.
Pools at… the hospital. For once, Maxime Grousset (25 years old) and Yohann Ndoye Brouard (23 years old) abandoned their swimsuits for white coats. The two French swimmers continue to train several hours a day in the Insep swimming pool with the Budapest Short Course World Championships on the horizon, which will take place at the end of the year (December 10 to 15). However, this does not prevent them, in the aftermath of these sumptuous Paris 2024 Olympic Games for French swimming and in particular its new superstar Léon Marchand, four times gold medalist, from already thinking about their reconversion. This summer’s two bronze medalists at the Paris La Défense Arena in the 4x100m medley relay alongside Florent Manaudou and the extra-terrestrial Marchand both imagine themselves embarking on a career in physiotherapy as soon as they are no longer more capable of stringing together exploits in pools around the world. It is in this context that the two young champions have just started an internship at the Paris Est Val-de-Marne hospitals, in Saint-Maurice, compulsory to validate their second year of school, we learn. The team this Tuesday.
Grousset: “I didn’t know I could help people”
For six weeks, for seven and a half hours a day, the world champion in the 100m butterfly (Grousset) and the European champion in the 200m backstroke will therefore have the opportunity to discover what perhaps awaits them once their careers are over. finished. To the great pleasure of the New Caledonian who tried (successfully) a few days ago to climb Mont Blanc as part of the Cordée Sport Planète. “Coming to do an internship at the hospital puts your feet back on the ground. We see people who need to be helped and I am very happy to do this internship”, appreciates Grousset, assigned to the neurology department (Editor’s note: Ndoye Brouard is doing his internship in traumatology”) and interviewed in the daily newspaper, delighted to discover a vocation. “Seeing that I can help and feeling that it does them good, it makes me feel good. I’m very happy to be able to help people and I didn’t know it. » Nevertheless, the two swimmers are happy to return to their jobs each late afternoon, a little more aware of being privileged. “I admit that I still want to get back to my daily life,” admits the older of the two possible future physiotherapists. I see how lucky I am to get up and shit every day in training. »
