Victorious over Hungary (82-68) on Sunday in the match for third place thanks to a burst of pride, the French basketball players returned from Ljubljana with the bronze medal, which was not the metal they were hoping for.
Coming for gold in Slovenia, Sarah Michel’s teammates are certainly continuing the fine series of women’s tricolor basketball which climbs on its eighth consecutive continental podium but falls back in the hierarchy after five silver medals.
At the end of the meeting, after a Marseillaise sung by the French supporters present in the room, the Bleues were able to wish a happy birthday to Sandrine Gruda, who was celebrating her 36th birthday, with a smile.
They thus write one of the longest presences on the podium of a Euro, not far from the nine medals of Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s, but still at a distance from the 22 rank finals (and 21 coronations) of the hegemonic USSR from 1950 to 1991.
The metal of the 2023 edition is not as bright as the silver of 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 but, as Bleues coach Jean-Aimé Toupane pointed out after the defeat against Belgium in the semi-finals Saturday evening in the Stozice Arena, the French women end with a won match, as was the case at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 against Serbia for the bronze.
After three minutes of observation dominated by Hungary (7-3), the French women took the measure of their opponents to inflict a 23-1 on them, under the impetus of Alexia Chartereau and Migna Touré, and go well ahead to the score after the first ten minutes (26-8).
Hit in the right shoulder seven days ago in a game without stake against Slovenia in the last match of the first round, Iliana Rupert made her comeback, with a bandage, at the end of the first quarter, succeeding in her first three shots, including one three-pointer. The 21-year-old interior finished the game with 13 points.
Les Bleues then managed their lead of around twenty points throughout the game.
The Magyares revived the suspense a little in the last two minutes of the match by returning to nine points (74-65), but Touré, the top French scorer with 20 points, breathed new life into her teammates (80-66 ) with two three-pointers.
One year before the Olympic Games at home, French basketball had checked this Women’s Euro as a launching pad towards the supreme deadline.
The management, which made the choice to do without one of its best players, the rear Marine Johannès, taken by its obligations towards its American franchise of WNBA, could see the path which remains to be covered to seek a third Olympic podium after 2012 silver in London and 2021 bronze in Tokyo.
They can also remember that before the exploits of the Braqueuses in England eleven years ago, the France team had already taken bronze at the Euro in 2011.