“I grew up in a culture where reaching the semi-finals is already not bad”. The famous maxim taken up by Pierre de Coubertin, ensuring that “the important thing is to participate”, has never found favor in the eyes of Yannick Noah. On the tennis court, nothing counts more than victory for those who prepare a year in advance for their triumph at Roland-Garros. Before capsizing the public at the Porte d’Auteuil, the Franco-Cameroonian took part in the Davis Cup campaign in 1982, which led the French team to the final, losing to the United States. But during this epic, it is another event completely foreign to tennis which makes germinate in him this “hatred” of the defeat.
Direction the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan Stadium in Seville where, on the eve of the Davis Cup quarter-final against Czechoslovakia, the French football team challenges Germany, or rather the FRG, in the semi-finals of the World Cup football 1982. A cruel evening for the Blues led by Michel Platini, beaten on penalties after an anthology match (3-3). A meeting also marked by the kamikaze outing of goalkeeper Harald Schumacher on poor Patrick Battiston, evacuated on a stretcher, unconscious, his body heaving in spasms. “We lose an unlosable game,” recalls Yannick Noah. “We lead 3-1, we are stronger than them! And the day after the defeat, The Teamwhich at the time was the Bible, title ‘Formidable’ or ‘extraordinary’, something like that”. A state of mind that hardly befits the native of Sedan.
Break the curse
“And me, I said to myself: ‘no … I’m not great if I lose in the half. And I’m going to fight against these people,’ says Noah at the microphone of Jacques Vendroux. The Habs then set their sights on their number 1 objective. The one that none of their compatriots had managed to achieve so far in the open era: to lift the trophy at Roland-Garros. A tournament he left in the quarter-finals in 1982, beaten by the Argentinian Guillermo Vilas. “In 1983, I thought I could win. I thought it was possible and that I was one of two or three who could win. In 1982, I was one of ten”, he develops.
This path to success, Yannick Noah will trace alongside his trainer, Patrice Hagelauer. An “osmosis” is created between the two men. “We said to ourselves ‘we’re trying something, but it’s to get the Grail'”. But this desire for personal triumph also takes on a collective dimension. The duo want to break the curse. The one that locks France into a status of eternal defeat. “The thing is that every time we go to see the matches, we palm! We never win! We don’t have this thing. We don’t have, in the trophy room, in the training rooms or in the locker room, photos of one of ours who has the Roland trophy. And we said to ourselves ‘we will do it ourselves'”.
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A dream fueled by the joy that such an event would provide. “You say to yourself ‘but p **** if we win but it’s going to be fire! But they’re all going to die of joy! And we can do that,’ he recalls. Yannick Noah had therefore already seen everything. A year later, on a central court totally committed to his cause, the Frenchman defeated the Swede and defending champion Mats Wilander in three sets. A feat that no other tricolor has managed, for the time being, to reproduce.
To listen in full to Yannick Noah’s intimate and rare account of the strongest moments of his life, find the podcast “Yannick Noah, between you and me” produced by Europe 1 Studio on your favorite listening platform.