His counter mounted on the handlebars indicates that he has spent, on average per week, 500 kilometers screwed on the pedals after having swallowed 600 pool lengths and covered the equivalent of five half-marathons. A cadence printed by Vincent Luis since the beginning of May to perfect a millimeter season with, as a climax, the individual triathlon event at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Monday July 26.
His shaved beard like his hair would almost make him look younger. But don’t be fooled: the 32-year-old Vesulian no longer has much to do with the kid who revealed himself to the public at the London Games in 2012. No more than with the young man we see. gave Rio favorite four years later. If it is not the desire to take, finally, Olympic gold.
“If my career ends tomorrow, I will already have accomplished a lot more than I dreamed of”
At the time of participating in his third Olympic Games, the world number one and double reigning world champion comes to Japan with the regularity of a metronome. Fifteen years after his debut on the international circuit, Vincent Luis, uninhibited, feels ready to offer France the metal it has been coveting since 2000, when the discipline was introduced at the Sydney Games. “I won national, continental and world titles but not an Olympic medal. It’s a title that I would like to bring home, but if my career ends tomorrow, I will have accomplished a lot more than I dreamed of, young ”, slides the triathlete to the World.
Aligned on the mixed relay, Saturday July 31, in a French team triple world champion of the discipline, Luis will have a second opportunity to sing The Marseillaise in a test which appears for the first time on the Games menu.
“Triathlon is not a profession”
Born in Vesoul (Haute-Saône), in 1989, Vincent Luis made his first breaststroke at the age of 6, following in the footsteps of his older sister, Caroline. But the child, who rushes homework on his way home from school to climb the hill of La Motte, feels cramped in the water lines. He refuses to join the sports-study swimming section of Mulhouse. He then gets on the bike to accompany his father’s running outings. On the saddle, the naturophile, charmed by the passing of the seasons, instinctively turns towards the triathlon.
Very quickly, the teenager flies over the youth categories. At 19, he won the championships in France, Europe and the world juniors. These successes whet his appetite for victory: “I passed my baccalaureate and told my father that I wanted to devote myself to triathlon. He replied: “It’s not a job” ”, remembers this son of Portuguese immigrants to whom we quickly learned that ” the talent [n’était] not a diploma ”.
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