From our special correspondent in Tokyo,
The race has been over for ten minutes already, but Hugo Boucheron has still not caught his breath at the edge of the Sea Forest Waterway, the “sea forest channel”. Under a parasol graciously deployed by the organization, since Typhoon Nepartak has already taken its vacation and the sun is once again pursuing the athletes into Tokyo Bay, the brand new tricolor Olympic rowing champion, caught in endless straights of cough, let his friend Mathieu Androdias do all the work.
“In the last 550, it was for them”
“It was not nice, we throw ten potatoes from space to finish, we do not even know if we are in front”. They are ahead, by two tenths, an Olympic record. It is because the duel against the Dutch team was immense until the end. Adrien Hardy, gold medalist in Athens over the distance (2000m), takes the time to debrief us in the stands:
Each boat has its strengths and weaknesses over the same week we know them, it’s difficult to change them. We all have our signature. And the Dutch had shown us in all the qualifying races that on the third 500 meters, the one where fatigue really begins to set in, they were away from all the competitors to be quiet afterwards. “
And Adrien Hardy to specify: “Hugo and Matthieu were warned, they have a big start and a big last 600 m, they were able to respond to the attack of the Dutch and limit the bleeding in the third 500, always remaining within range. on their port side. And then they started to catch up, and then side to side in the last 500 it was for them. “
🇫🇷🥇 OLYMPIC CHAMPIONS !! The French pair Hugo Boucheron and Matthieu Androdias won gold, breaking the Olympic record!
🔝🤩 What a foot! Third gold medal for the French delegation.
▶ ️ Follow the Olympics live: https://t.co/lvz3vlDDPW pic.twitter.com/JtYJH1pRyZ
– France tv sport (@francetvsport) July 28, 2021
A duo that had to overcome a lot of hardships
Told like that, it was hand sewn. However, it did not happen on its own. “We squirt hard, we start quickly from the stats, Androdias analyzes. But behind I make a huge mistake, which brings us back in the package. A blow of the shovel. “The pallet gets stuck in the water and it breaks the speed of the boat,” Hardy translates. Boucheron does the same when there are only ten strokes left to be given to be Olympic champion. Alexis Besançon, the coach: “It happens. It’s a very hard pelvis, We have the impression that it is flat, but it moves a lot and we saw it throughout the race, I am surprised that there was not more error than that. “
No matter. The Midas of the French coaches (fourth boat in the Olympic final), has so much to tell about the duo who will enter the lives of the French when they wake up. Sixth in Rio, world and European champions in 2018, a highway to the Olympic title, before the power failure at the 2019 Worlds. Boucheron is flat, feverish, almost unable to give a blow of the palette. Besançon: “We didn’t know what it was at the beginning, it could be the flu, anything. Even more worrying is the verdict of the blood tests: toxoplasmosis. The boat qualifies nonetheless hard.
“It was very hard, 40 fever all week, remembers Hugo Boucheron, the younger of the two (28 years old). I kept going to see the coach to tell him to replace me but he did not let go. In the B final, Mat ‘had a race like I have rarely seen. I was in a coat rack behind, he had been extraordinary in qualifying us ”. Where other duets would have cracked, Matthieu and Hugo, who have rowed together since 2015, further strengthen their bond. It was not won, however: “When we were put together because we had made one and two of the selections, Mathieu did not agree too much. Androdias, lined up for the 2012 Olympics in a four-man boat, was coming out of a conflict with the DTN at the time, which had taken him out of the group.
“Mathieu didn’t really agree to row with me”
“We are two very different people, continues Boucheron, but we are very close friends in life, which is what allowed us, despite all the failures we have known, to get up and look further. The last setback in 2020, when both catch Covid-19 at the same time, is swallowed up in two seconds. “We have two atypical profiles, decrypts their coach. The facetious Hugo, who always has a laugh, and Matthieu, the very serious engineer who seeks to analyze and rationalize everything. I perceive a lot of complementarity between them, a lot of compassion and empathy, and therefore of collective strength. They went towards each other, throughout these last five years, it gives a collective victory ”.
“Go towards each other”, you really have to take the expression as it is. To give himself a chance to improve what can be done before the Games, the Rochelais Androdias made the decision to move to Rhône-Alpes in order to be closer to his daily friend at the Lyon rowing circle. “It’s very symbolic, because ultimately they are able to be on the same training site, to meet for one out of two training sessions, and the other to do it alone, recognizes Alexis Besançon. Indeed, it simplifies a lot of things, but it is rather at the technical and personality level, to accept the faults of the other to make them strengths. “
Is it all these faults, all these galleys, that the two men think, when they go back a few moments in their boat to put it back in the garage, after a bubbling Marseillaise, or of the relatives who got up at dawn in France to follow the ‘exploit? A bit of both, certainly. “I saw some pictures, I think there were a lot of people at the club, smiles Androdias. I can’t wait to bring them this medal and say a huge thank you. They made as many sacrifices as we did, because everything in our lives was set aside for this Olympic project. ” It was worth it.