After failed Worlds, the French team will try to raise their heads during the European Championships in Munich, to be followed from Saturday to Friday from 12:55 p.m. on France Télévisions, with, already, the Paris Olympics in a corner of the head.
Less than two years from the Paris Olympics, the French athletics team has never seemed so feverish. From Eugene, in the United States, where the world championships were held in July, she brought back only one medal. In Munich, Germany, at the European Championships, she will have to do better. Much better even. The Blues can, fortunately, count on their recent world champion, Kevin Mayer. Double Olympic vice-champion (2016 and 2020), gold medalist twice at the Worlds (2017 and 2022), the Francilien, who is aiming for the Olympic title in 2024, has never won gold in Europe. But no rival seems to be able to deprive him of a second medal in three weeks.
A NEW MOTIVATED GENERATION
Eyes will also be turned towards the new generation, and in particular towards Sasha Zhoya. At 20, the brand new French champion in the 110 meter hurdles holds the junior world record in the discipline. In Eugene, for his first major senior competition, he was eliminated in the semifinals. In Germany, his goal will be to make it to the final with the other two French hurdle specialists, Just Kwaou-Mathey and Pascal Martinot-Lagarde. The performance of Meba-Mickaël Zézé and of Mouhamadou Fall (100m and 200m),Hugo Hay (5,000m), from Quentin Bigot (fourth in the hammer throw in Eugene) or Renelle Lamote (800 m) will also be closely monitored.
LAVILLENIE IS STILL THERE
At 35, Renaud Lavillenie is one of the seniors. But the 2012 Olympic champion still has a bright future ahead of him. In Eugene he finished fifth in the world and second best European. In Munich, he can therefore hope to obtain a medal. As for Alexandra Tavernier, she skipped the Worlds to focus on the European Championships. The fourth of the last Olympic Games in the hammer throw will aim for a new European medal, after her second place in Berlin, in 2018. At 28 years old and two years from Paris 2024, she is considered the leader of the French women’s team . The European Championships in Munich will be an opportunity to see if Armand Duplantis can again achieve the unimaginable: in Eugene, the 22-year-old Swede cleared the bar at 6.21m and broke his own world record in the pole vault. He asserts himself a little more like “the” star of world athletics. In Germany, eyes will also be on the Italian’s performance Marcell JacobsOlympic champion in the 100m in Tokyo, of the Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen21, Olympic champion in the 1,500m and world champion in the 5,000m, or the Briton Dina Asher-Smiththe best sprinter of the Old Continent who already has four European titles to her name.
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