The athletes will not meet Victor Wembanyama and company at the Olympic village next year. If Jean-Aimé Toupane’s daughters will stay with the rest of the competitors during the Olympics, the French men’s basketball team has chosen to “leave the Olympic bubble”. Obviously, this has a “significant cost”, the French Basketball Federation (FFBB) taking charge of accommodation, for example, and the rest. “There are also questions of security and transport,” adds President Siutat. “But we assume it because it is important for performance,” he continues, specifying “working for three or four months with all the actors, the organization, the ministry, the CNOSF… It is meticulous work which must be done so that we do not waste too much energy in this choice, on Lille or Paris.
Because yes, basketball will have the particularity of being played on the sites of Lille and Paris on the occasion of the 2024 Olympic Games. For the group stage, it will be at the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Villeneuve d’Ascq, already used for the Euro 2015, then at the Accor Arena (Paris) from the quarter-finals. Note that the hand will travel the opposite way, from Paris to Lille. Still, there will of course be an Olympic village in the capital, and another in the North of France.
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But for the basketball Blues, it was a “question of balance and constraints”, says Mr. Siutat. A priori, they will be the only ones in this case with the Americans, who are accustomed to this practice. France is less… It is “a common decision”, as Boris Diaw indicates. “We all thought about it. We spoke about it to the senior players,” explains the General Manager of the selection, putting forward the idea of having the means to be “as efficient as possible”.
How is getting out of the village an advantage? “We have a staff with a lot of important people in different areas, and being in the Olympic village does not allow us to work effectively with these people all day, or even all evening sometimes, with matches that can end at 10 p.m. 11 p.m., with care until 2 a.m., explains the former captain of the Blues. Except that when we have very regulated entrances to the village for those who are not accredited, it becomes very complicated. Half the staff couldn’t fit back into the village! It becomes a blocking problem for the overall functioning of the French team.”
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And “Babac” continues: “There is also the freedom to work at times that suit us. When we enter the competition process, in the village, we are subject to training schedules that we do not determine, and these are sometimes shorter schedules, with training sessions reduced to 45 minutes per for example, and at times that do not necessarily suit us, on rest periods, at times when we could have meals… In short, it is much more comfortable to work with a view to performance.” It’s very clear. Note that the Tokyo Olympic vice-champions will be at Insep during the second week. That is, if they come out of the chickens! After the fiasco of the World Cup last summer, we must not swear about anything…
It remains to be seen why women did not take the same option. “We should already ask the players the question, because we asked them the question, we took an internal vote,” explains Céline Dumerc, Boris Diaw’s alter ego for the French women’s team. Having experienced it, there is a certain ease of movement, it is a well-oiled system, everything is well organized. We don’t know how it would have gone outside. We’re not like boys, with enormous demands so we’re quite protected. In the village, there is also a certain alchemy, a certain spirit that the girls wanted to experience. The gentlemen made another choice for Paris 2024.
