What is your assessment of the Worlds for the French team? Is the silver medal in the men’s 4x400m just window dressing?Stéphane Diagana: You can’t be afraid to come back without a medal and when you get one, don’t value it. Now, the overall result of the France team is not surprising. We have known for some time that we are going to suffer from a generational air pocket. Since 2018, personally, I had felt that we were heading towards a more difficult period in terms of results. Afterwards, I did not expect it to be so much. But the conclusion is there: today, our team is cut out to obtain one or two medals. No more.
How do you explain this generational air gap? It’s very difficult to analyze. We had a great generation in 2014, which we could hope would take over from the previous one. And then finally, it evaporated, like Axel Chapelle at the pole who has already put an end to his career. The medals should come from athletes who are now between 26 and 29 years old, who have come of age after having honed their skills over the last three or four years. However, we have almost no one in this age group capable of aiming for a podium and carrying this French team.
How can we also explain the absence of newcomers, with the exception of Sasha Zhoya, the tree that somewhat hides the forest? I wonder about the desire of young people to do athletics at a very high level. . To be successful as a junior is one thing, but to transform it to the level above is another, much more delicate. Today, the new generations are perhaps less inclined to invest themselves in a sport like athletics, which requires a lot of effort and sacrifice. We do not say that we do athletics, but that we practice it. It is possible that this sport is not in line with the expectations of young people. So I hope the problem is not deeper, but when we see the case of Germany as well, which is an even more important country in world athletics, getting zero medals in these World Championships, there has a real question to ask. There are new disciplines emerging, perhaps more fun and more rewarding than athletics.
Can we ask ourselves if young people in France still want to hurt themselves on an athletics track? Is there a sufficient culture of effort and surpassing oneself in France? It’s a real question. When we see Thibaut Collet who came to our set after his final, we can see that he has been immersed in athletics since a very young age and he knows what the culture of work, of effort is. This came out very strongly from his words. Same thing with Jimmy Gressier who evoked the worker past of his parents and who knows the value of the word work. We must not forget that athletics is an individual sport, in which we cannot take advantage, in a certain way, of a collective dynamic. We can’t hide. The slightest defect in the investment is immediately sanctioned. We thus see countries emerging and crunching their teeth into this sport. When you look at India, Pakistan or others, you see that the dynamic is not the same. Hence my question: is the problem of French athletics temporary or much more lasting, and therefore worrying? If this is the case, we will have to be even more demanding in terms of detection and training, and also know how to be more attractive to young people to try to grow the pool of those who want to do high-level athletics.
Isn’t it also worrying to see disciplines completely neglected, with no Frenchman able to qualify even for the final, failing to aim for a medal there? We look at athletics as a sport in its own right when it is made up of many disciplines requiring totally different qualities. It’s very complicated to have finalists in weight, in the sprint, in the pole vault… It’s like trying to be efficient in judo, handball, tennis… Is it within reach of France, Who doesn’t have a system suitable for such ambitious goals? If you look closely, no country can do it, not even the United States which, for once, has an incredible system with its university network. But that does not prevent them from being in difficulty in certain disciplines where they do not seek to have medals because that would require too much know-how and financial investment. Ditto if you look at our European neighbors. Spain brings back four titles of these Worlds, all on the march. Out of that, they are much more struggling, if not non-existent. China is trying to be very competitive in athletics, it puts significant resources into it and yet it does not succeed over time. I think in Budapest she only took two medals (bronze). We see that it is not easy even for a country of 1.5 billion inhabitants, which makes sport a soft power issue.
France, today, lacks athletes… The French Federation, today, represents 300,000 licensees. But how many are between 20 and 30 years old? I think you can divide the number by ten, or about 30,000. And of those 30,000, how many are engaged in a genuine pursuit of performance and high standards? Let’s imagine that there are 15%, which is already a very ambitious estimate. So that’s 4,500. Finally, among the latter, it is still necessary to divide by the 44 disciplines that make up athletics… You see how much that is, especially since the distribution will not take place in an equal way between all the disciplines. So for me, that we are not strong everywhere does not surprise me, and even seems normal to me given the means available to the Federation. She does what she can with what she has.
Are there solutions in your opinion? In the short term, we need to optimize performance, what we have. And in the medium and long term, we need an overhaul of our system. I am thinking above all of the link between sport and school. I am a club president and I would like to stop hearing parents telling me that their son or daughter will be in 4th grade next year and that they will not be able to train three times a week, that priority will be given to their homework. Far be it from me to say that studies are not important, quite the contrary. Simply, in some countries, they manage much better than us to reconcile the two. In addition, the challenge is not only in terms of high level and performance, but also public health. The reflection on the reduction of school holidays is also of interest if this makes it possible to reduce the days in favor of extracurricular activities, sports or not. This will allow us to keep kids longer and not see them quit at the end of college. Finally, it is necessary to make strong choices and seek coaches abroad, except that this has a cost. And in France, we often tend to prefer to take refuge behind what works, such as hedges or poles. Today, I am surprised to see how completely neglected the sprint sector is. In particular among women, while in the past we had Muriel Hurtis, Christine Arron, Myriam Soumaré, without going back to Marie-José Pérec. Among men, the situation is perhaps a little less worse, and even then. Before, we had an extraordinary reservoir of athletes from the West Indies, a reservoir that is completely empty today. Is it a question of means or attractiveness? I do not have the answer but it would be necessary to analyze this and identify the reasons because the West Indies no longer contribute to the good health of French athletics.
So, do we have to, in some way, give up on the next Olympics? Very clearly, we don’t have a team to go for 6 or 8 medals in a year. If we optimize everything, we can hope for 3 or 4 podiums, but certainly not 8. Even if the years follow one another and are not necessarily alike, and sometimes success can transform a potential 5th place into a podium on D-Day. But that seems to me more and more complicated with the global level which increases in other countries. Now, maybe Paris 2024 can have the effect of an electric shock, even if we should not expect mountains and wonders.