The flag bearers of the French delegation for the Olympic Winter Games (OG) in Beijing (from February 4 to 20) are now known. As for the Tokyo Games, in the summer of 2021, it is a duo, a man and a woman, whose names were revealed on Wednesday January 26 on the set of the program “Tout le sport” ( France 3). Kevin Rolland (freestyle skiing) and Tessa Worley (alpine skiing) will therefore have the honor and the responsibility of opening the parade of the Blues in the National Stadium in Beijing, Friday, February 4, for the opening ceremony.
Both were appointed by their Olympian peers, “ambassadors” from the three winter Olympic federations (skiing, ice sports and ice hockey), themselves submitted to the vote of the general public, in December 2021, on the social networks of the France team. The tricolor delegation in Beijing is made up of 88 athletes (they were 108 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018) who, before aiming for the medals, will above all have to avoid the trap of Covid-19.
Rolland and Worley are names that speak in the white circus. The first is a miracle. Bronze medalist in the half-pipe (half-tube in which skiers must perform acrobatic tricks) at the Sochi Games (Russia, 2014), the Savoyard was seriously injured on May 2, 2019 in La Plagne while trying to beat the world record for the highest jump from a springboard over ten meters. The fall is terrible. Assessment: three days of coma and multiple fractures, especially in the pelvis.
Three months of hospitalization
The champion tells in a documentary, Resiliencebroadcast on January 25 on Eurosport, how he went through the hardships of three months of hospitalization, his convalescence, his rehabilitation. And above all how he took it into his head to try, at the age of 32, his somewhat crazy bet to win in Beijing, three years after his terrible accident, a new Olympic podium.
Tessa Worley is the locomotive of women’s alpine skiing. La Bornandine – also 32 years old – does not hide it: she is playing her last Olympic Games. Injured in the knee just before Sochi, a little next to her ski (7and of the giant) four years later in South Korea, she arrives in Beijing full of confidence.
The double world champion in giant slalom (2013 and 2017) won the fifteenth victory of her career in Lienz (Austria) at the end of December 2021, and has since multiplied the podiums. Best – if not unique – chance of a medal with Les Bleues du Ski, Tessa Worley can, on the Yanqing track, put an end to a form of Olympic “curse”.
During the Beijing Paralympic Games ceremony (March 4 to 13), Benjamin Daviet will carry the French flag alone. The blue delegation has only one representative in its ranks: eight-time Olympic champion Marie Bochet (alpine skiing), already flag bearer in Pyongchang in 2018.
The biathlete from Annecy, already crowned three times in South Korea, will have the opportunity to continue a great adventure started ten years ago, when he was still a plumber.