Yannick Noah on His “Guardian Angel” Mother’s Sacrifice

On October 1, 2012, Yannick Noah experienced one of the greatest dramas of his life. The tennis champion, who has since become a singing star, said goodbye to his mother, Marie-Claire Noah, taken away by a long illness. Even today, the latter considers his mother as his “guardian angel”. In a podcast Europe 1 animated Jacques Vendroux, broadcast on May 31, 2023, he returns with emotion to the relationship he had with his mother.

The Sacrifice of a Loving Mother

“We often talk about the sacrifices of the players, but we forget the entourage, we forget the sacrifices, the dreams, the torture of the parents who separate from their kids for years, years which are the best years of life.” Yannick Noah affirms it from behind the microphone: to allow him to have the global career that everyone knows him to be, his parents, and in particular his mother, agreed to sacrifice themselves by separating from him.

I cried every night.

“It was not ordinary to have your child leave so young,” says Yannick Noah, referring to his years spent in boarding school to practice tennis. But despite everything, Marie-Claire Noah agreed to let him go, convinced that a great future awaited him if he followed his passion.

“I asked him ‘but how did you do?’ It’s not like I was going to boarding school because I was being punished, because I screwed up… I wanted to play tennis which is something completely abstract, with very little chance of success on top of that.” Without shame, she revealed a long-kept secret to him: “She told me ‘listen, I’m not going to put any particular pressure on you, but I think that for five or six years before I returned to France, I cried every night'”.

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“When I was losing, she was sick”

Marie-Claire Noah looked a lot like her son: “Mom was athletic, so this energy and this frustration, she put it in the encouragement.” Even if it means getting physically involved in her son’s success: “When I was playing, if I lost, she was sick. If I won a tournament, I knew she was happy.”

With humor, Yannick Noah confides that his mother was “collapsed” when other players were doing better than him, and that if she had been able, she would have put a spoke in their wheels : “I know that there are certain French players who were my opponents, and even after I quit, I think mum was putting spikes in dolls so that they lost.” A committed mother, ready to do anything for her son, and who has always been her pillar.

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