Europe 1 with AFP
modified to
6:57 p.m., February 16, 2023
“I imagined myself in front of these bleachers filled with French people singing the Marseillaise…”. Tessa Worley, who left the track when she was playing for the title of the giant of the Méribel Alpine Skiing World Championships, came very close to succeeding in her last big challenge. “I feel disappointment… It ends very abruptly, there, at nothing at all from the public. I wanted to cross this line by having given everything and to be proud of myself. It’s the case, but it ended too quickly,” says Tessa Worley.
With emotion in her voice, Tessa Worley commented in the mixed zone on her cruel end to the race, a fault and a slip on her back a few doors from the finish of a race she saw herself winning. Already double giant world champion (2013 and 2017), victorious sixteen times on the world circuit in almost fifteen years of career, Tessa Worley (33) had made these French Worlds and her favorite race her last big goal. .
“I touched it with my finger”
Not on the podium once this winter, she had been able to get up to speed with the event with renewed style and aggressiveness to set the second fastest time in the first run, just behind the American Mikaela Shiffrin, finally crowned in the wake of his fall.
“I really tried hard, to play for victory, unfortunately it doesn’t do it today. I imagined myself in front of these stands full of French people to sing the Marseillaise”, explains Tessa Worley who continues: “But this n ‘s not how the day is written. The idea was to go for something big, I touched it with my finger. I knew that the last wall was important. I mobilized on the top of the wall , I pushed, let go of my skis, but it ‘caught’ my boot, I couldn’t do anything, I didn’t have time to react”.
“A super well-trained girl”
“She made us vibrate. She has nothing to reproach herself for, she did everything it took to live the day to the fullest, but our sport is like that, it rocks for nothing at all”, greets the director of the French women’s team Lionel Pellicier, previously coach of Worley. “She has always been there, always with a smile, she is a very well trained, respectful, hardworking girl, with the joy of living, she is a great lady of skiing, a huge champion”, adds- he voice trembling with emotion.