How to say goodbye? Not to the people you love, but to strangers who, one day, showed you, beyond reason, encouragement or signs of gratitude. In this case, strangers who have sometimes traveled thousands of kilometers to come and applaud you on a cross-country ski trail, often in the cold, sometimes in the snow.
We are in April 2020, in full confinement, and Martin Fourcade has just ended his extraordinary career as a biathlete. His last five races took place behind closed doors. Even though he won the last one, he felt like he was tiptoeing away. “I couldn’t say goodbye to my audience,” he says to him.
A five-time Olympic gold medalist and seven-time overall winner of the Biathlon World Cup, Martin Fourcade is the most successful athlete in French Olympic history. Organizing a jubilee for a champion of this caliber is nothing short of classic. But Martin Fourcade has another idea: “And if I went on stage to tell my life story”, he said to his wife, Hélène. Which she responds to him straight away: “You’re not going to do that, are you?” »
It must be recognized that she has arguments to make: her champion husband has not only never been on a stage in his life, but he has never even entered the door of a theater. Above all, in ten years of career and media pressure, Martin Fourcade has built such a shell that he has always been in control of himself, his words, his gestures.
Twenty-four beats per minute
However, three and a half years later, the athlete is there, on the big stage of the MC2, the Maison de la culture in Grenoble, in full rehearsal of Off road, the show he co-wrote. We meet him ten days before the premiere of a tour which will pass through Paris on November 9 and 10 at the Théâtre du Rond-Point, and will travel throughout France until March. Martin Fourcade, 35, whose heart has the specificity of purring at twenty-four beats per minute (two to three times less than normal) shows no apparent signs of stress.
The apprentice actor just minces his words a little, like in real life, and it annoys him. To his director, Matthieu Cruciani, who has just interrupted the rehearsal, he whispers: “Without being tense, I am less fluid. Hi Mom ? » A little blank: “Oh yes, didn’t I tell you that my mother is a speech therapist? » At break time, he wants to remove any ambiguity: “I definitely don’t want to become an actor. » Then, as if he had just understood that he could no longer turn back, he added: “It was only me who could tell my story and my sport. »
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