Funny atmosphere at the Monal Challenge: this event counting for the Men’s Epee World Cup, the last selective event for the Olympic Games for French fencers, takes place Saturday May 18 and Sunday May 19 in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés ( Val-de-Marne) in a deleterious climate within the French team. Unheard of in a sport with rather polite morals, just over two months before the opening ceremony of the Paris Games.
The press point organized on Tuesday May 14 in the weapons room of the National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance (Insep), base camp of the French fencing teams, provided an illustration of this brilliant. The national coach, Gauthier Grumier, invokes his right of reserve not to answer questions concerning the ” human relations “ and concludes: “This is not how I imagined the year 2024, but we have to deal with it”.
The three best French swordsmen, the reigning Olympic champion Romain Cannone, the former world champion Yannick Borel and the world number eight Alexandre Bardenet, who together slammed the door of Insep in September 2023, do not hide their bitterness towards the national technical direction: “We have the impression that they said to themselves: we will help them as little as possible, that way, they will come back to us”says Romain Cannone.
Finally, the national technical director, Jean-Yves Robin, tries to put on a good face and notes: “Playing the Olympic Games at home, I see it more as a constraint than as an advantage, because there are many players who want to intervene. » From “actors” targeted, we will recognize the club leaders and coaches, these clubs in which the three dissidents found refuge after their combined departures from Insep.
A good season, despite the sling
A shadow hung over the training room on Tuesday: that of Hugues Obry, coach of the France team until his resignation in February. A charismatic coach who led the French swordsmen to the Olympic team title in 2016 (which he himself had won twelve years previously) before a Chinese interlude, completed in 2021. Hugues Obry including Romain Cannone, Yannick Borel and Alexandre Bardenet could not support no longer the management and to whom they no longer speak.
For the three slingers, the point of no return is reached during the world championships in Milan, in July 2023. In the middle of the competition, Hugues Obry provokes an impromptu meeting which turns, according to the shooters, into a trial of Yannick Borel. “The tone rises and several nations look at us every time we shout”will tell Alexandre Bardenet in March at The Team. At the start of the September school year, the three swordsmen asked for explanations and a review. According to them, Hugues Obry refuses the discussion and leaves the meeting.
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