Less than a year from the Paris Olympics, the French athletics team almost hit rock bottom at the World Championships in Budapest, avoiding zero points in extremis thanks to the men’s 4x400m relay on Sunday.
It took very little for the Blues to experience the worst result in their history at the World Championships (zero medals in 1983 and 1993). Ludvy Vaillant, Gilles Biron, David Sombé and Téo Andant snatched the silver and endorsed, French record at the key (2:58.45), the role of saviors as Kevin Mayer had done in the decathlon a year ago at the Worlds in Eugene (Oregon, USA).
Not enough to make you forget that the blue-white-red balance sheet is embarrassing, eleven months before the Olympic high mass at home.
Beyond the podiums, the Blues compile a reduced number of finalist places (top 8). Eight, when their all-time low is six (in 1983 and 2019).
“The record is not good”, agrees with AFP the director of high performance at the French Athletics Federation (FFA) Romain Barras, who, failing to shine, had urged his troops to raise their heads. , with a lot of metaphors ranging from the superhero’s cape to the wolves hunting in the forest.
“My biggest disappointment is the inability of the majority of athletes to transcend themselves on D-Day, beating their personal best, their best score of the season or finishing in a better place” than their ranking world, he regrets.
This is the other vertigo of this French selection, however enlarged: out of 56 athletes entered individually, only ten achieved their best performance of the season, six of whom improved their personal best.
“What hurts is the lack of ability to reach the finals, retains the Olympic and world medalist in the 200m Christophe Lemaitre at the microphone of Eurosport. We always want to be optimistic, but one year (from the Olympics), it’s difficult to change everything, to find solutions to help athletes get through this.
Amid this disastrous record, a few rare glimmers of hope, with Sasha Zhoya in the 110m hurdles, Thibaut Collet in the pole vault, Alice Finot in the 3,000m steeplechase, with a new French record, and part of the relays.
But the situation is sufficiently alarming for the Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra to summon the leaders of the FFA to come and explain themselves fissa: the trio André Giraud, president, Patrick Ranvier, national technical director, and Barras are expected at the ministry. from Tuesday.
Finally the trend is only anchoring for the French athlete, who has been pitching seriously since 2019.
“At some point, I can’t take on everyone’s expectations. I can not assume to be the only one to make medals for the France team ”, lamented Mayer, spearhead of the Blues, after his abandonment in Budapest.
What is looming for French athletics with its historically poor results are also financial consequences, in particular on the side of the big moneymaker of the high level, the National Sports Agency (ANS) – which has already raised its suspenders. these last years.
“One year from the Games, inevitably the funnels are tightening, notes Barras. The state of the results today will inevitably have an impact” on the number of athletes helped by the ANS, which no longer believes in the “fantasy of six or eight medals”.
The FFA can nevertheless count on its own funding channels, specifies Barras, who does not want to “abandon” the athletes. The ANS “has a huge machine to manage, the Olympics, and focuses on the medals, we federations must have a broader vision, he believes.
How to raise the bar, if not for the 2024 Olympics, at least for after?
“Going further in support”, in terms of “performance optimization or medical monitoring” for example, “thinking about competition on a daily basis, emulation, evokes Barras. Actions were put in place in September 2022, or even January 2023, and that takes time. But “it will snowball”, he wants to believe.
In the meantime, it remains to cross our fingers so that “the magic of the Stade de France and the magic of the Games at home operates”.
