Yes, the title race has not yet seen its outcome since Lille has only one point ahead of PSG.
Yes, the Frenchman Victor Lafay won the 8th stage of the Giro on his own on Saturday, obtained his very first victory among professionals and clinched Cofidis’ first success in eleven years on the Giro d’Italia.
Yes, Rafael Nadal knocked out the competition on clay before Roland-Garros (from May 31 to June 13), by disgusting world number one Novak Djokovic on Sunday, in the final of the Masters 1000 in Rome (7-5, 1-6, 6-3).
But something else happened this weekend that you might have missed.
The three weekend lessons
- To make your demands heard, you will block footballers
Union action is being renewed. Sunday afternoon, the workers of the Fonderie de Bretagne (FDB) – whose factory is located in Caudan, ten kilometers from Lorient – innovated to defend their claim. A hundred employees blocked the Metz players’ hotel on the move for the 37e Ligue 1 day. “ We are able to block a match. What is the most important? A football match or 350 jobs? The more it will go, the more it will get worse. They want to play on usury, we are going to play on usury ”, said a union leader to the newspaper Le Télégramme
For a few hours, the strikers took advantage of the sounding board of a Ligue 1 match to make their message heard: protest against the sale of their factory. It is the Renault group, owner, which decided to part with it. The fate of the 350 FDB employees is therefore very uncertain.
Finally, the Metz players were able to leave their hotel around 7.15 p.m. in the direction of the Lorient stadium. The sub-prefect went there, as well as six CRS vehicles.
- From your little cloud, you will come down
Two finals in the space of a week, for a club which had hitherto played none at the highest level, that was perhaps too much. The players of Nantes Atlantique Handball (NAHB) learned the hard way on Saturday, losing in the final of the Coupe de France against Brest (33-37). For a week, the Nantes women have been living a waking dream after having defeated all predictions and won the European League on Sunday May 9 against the Hungarian club Siofok.
They are the champions !!! ??? https://t.co/ckebvDxVx0
The Brestoises, winners of the Coupe de France in 2016 and 2018, were keen to bring the NAHB players back to earth. The Bretons had already instilled doubt in the minds of their opponents by beating them Wednesday, May 12 in the league (32-23). Three days later, in the Palais des sports de Créteil, the players of Brest Bretagne Handball did not tremble in the face of the new champions of Europe.
The Brestoises now hope to imitate the Nantes women and achieve a historic treble. The Bretons will first play the final of the playoffs of the Women’s League against Metz, before going a few days later to Budapest to play the Final Four of the Champions League.
- In the rain, the tightrope walkers you will play
There was not one but two French riders on the podium of the French Motorcycle Grand Prix on Sunday. If Johann Zarco (Ducati-Pramac) and Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) brilliantly took the 2e and 3e places on the Le Mans circuit, it is the Australian Jack Miller who won on his Ducati.
In a race disrupted by the rain – the riders had to change motorcycles to get on those equipped with suitable tires – Miller resisted Zarco’s brilliant comeback to the end. “Maybe if we had changed bikes a little earlier, we could have won the race”, regretted the French, who failed to win his first Grand Prix in MotoGP. He now accumulates three second places and consoles himself by moving up to 3e place in the general classification.
?? @JohannZarco ? @ FabioQ20 ?? #FrenchGP https://t.co/O6fL1qQXy7
Third in the Sarthe, Quartararo took the lead in the championship for a “small” point (80 against 79) over the Italian Francesco Bagnaia. Zarco has 68 points, ahead of Miller 64.
The weekend video
A club president in heaven and a historic first for English club Leicester. On Saturday, the Foxes beat Chelsea in the FA Cup final (1-0) thanks to a splendid strike from Youri Tielemans. The image of the weekend is not the goal of the Belgian, but indeed the joy of Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, who came to celebrate this trophy on the Wembley lawn with the staff and the players of the club.
“You won’t see another owner come on the pitch like that and be LOVED!” This is special ? @LCFC players present c… https://t.co/Jdv3qZq6CS
The 35-year-old Thai has been president of Leicester since 2016 and the tragic death of his father Vichai in a helicopter crash as the club had just won their first English league title. “ I would love to win for Vichai and her family. His spirit will be with us for this final “Leicester coach Brendan Rodgers said ahead of the game. In front of more than 21,000 spectators, the emotion was strong at the final whistle. And Leicester can still go for a qualification in the Champions League.
The weekend figure
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By dint of fighting at the back of the pack in Formula 1 with the Haas team, Romain Grosjean had forgotten the feeling of the first places in the race. This weekend, the Frenchman stepped onto a podium for the first time in 2,092 days, nearly six years after his 3e place at the Belgian Grand Prix, August 23, 2015.
On Saturday, Grosjean finished second in the Indianapolis Grand Prix in Indycar, the competition he joined after leaving F1. For his third race in this category, the Frenchman had won his first pole position since 2011 before the Grand Prix. ” It was great to be in the lead and to fight for the win. I forgot how much I loved it », Wrote Romain Grosjean on his Twitter account after the race.
The declaration of the weekend
“It is dangerous to host the biggest international event in the whole world. The risk is therefore too great… I am against the holding of the Tokyo Olympics this year. (…) It would be a suicide mission. “
With just under two months of the start of the Olympic Games (July 23 to August 8), doubts still hover over the holding of the event. On Saturday, Hiroshi Mikitani, the CEO of Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant, put a coin back in the machine. While Japan is going through a new very harsh epidemic wave and an anti-Olympics petition has collected more than 350,000 signatures in a few hours, Mikitani considers the maintenance of the Games irresponsible. This is not the opinion of the Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, who was less alarmist on Friday: “ It is possible to organize safe and secure Games. We want to continue the preparations firmly. “
The weekend team
? ¡CAMPEONAS DE EUROPA! ?❤ @FCBfemeni #JugamosComoSomos https://t.co/UixsRLrQ32
Honor to Barcelona women, new European football champions after their success against Londoners Chelsea in the Champions League final in Gothenburg. The Catalans, falling for the Parisiennes in the semi-finals, largely dominated the English: 4-0 thanks to goals from Leupolz (against his side), Putellas, Bonmati and Graham Hansen. After the five consecutive titles of the Lyonnaises, the players of Barça offer themselves their first European title. This is the first time that a Spanish club has featured in the competition, previously owned by Swedish, English, French and German clubs.
The weekend quiz
Denis Ménétrier and Anthony Hernandez