Marie-Eve Gahié and Margaux Pinot, in the fight for a place at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. – Sipa
- In judo, each country can only send one representative per weight category to the Olympic Games.
- In the French women’s team, the fight is incredibly close between Marie-Eve Gahié and Margaux Pinot, both capable of claiming gold this summer in Tokyo.
- Larbi Benboudaoud confides in this puzzle before the European Championships in Lisbon.
Six faces and a gray silhouette. In a tweet on April 6, the French Judo Federation presented the future female delegation to the Tokyo Olympics. Alongside the Agbegnenou, Buchard or Malonga taulières, only one position remains to be filled, among the -70 kg. The Cornelian choice between the two planetary stars of the category – Marie-Eve Gahié (24 years old), world champion, and Margaux Pinot (27 years old), double European champion – must be confirmed at the end of the Euro in Lisbon, from Friday to Sunday.
And it is Larbi Benboudaoud who will have to deal with this impossible mission, after the fights in the category scheduled for Saturday. As if Pochettino absolutely had to decide between Neymar and Mbappé. Without being able to replace one by the other during the game.
“They know it, they have not been in competition for two days, launches the director of high performance of French judo. When you’re number 1 or 2 in the world anyway, you can’t sleep. We hope to send the best and we know very well that whatever happens, whatever the decision, it will be hard to take because the one that is left behind will not be unworthy. They are high level athletes and the high level is an elitist system where there is only one place at the finish. “
Shine in Lisbon: yes, but not only
In this ruthless universe, the flight to Tokyo will therefore pass through Portugal. Finally, yes, but not quite, dixit Benboudaoud: “These European championships will be just the end point of this competition that we will observe in its entirety. In the imagination, if one makes 3rd and the other 2nd, it is the 2nd who goes to the Games. It may not necessarily be that. We won’t stop at just one tournament. We will analyze all the seasons and competitions, see who they have faced, etc … “
The Judo Federation seems to be on the verge of creating specific software to decide between two athletes capable of returning from Japan with gold around their necks. The process is complex, but “intelligent” for Benjamin Darbelet. During his rich career, crossed under the greedy nickname of “bœuf bourguignon”, the native of Dijon has known three times the charms of these selections with a knife, for two participations in the Olympic Games, in 2004 and 2008.
The current dilemma between Gahié and Pinot sends him back 17 years, and to a high altitude duel in the -66 kg category … against a certain Larbi Benboudaoud, silver medalist at the Sydney Games in 2000. “It was my first Olympiad, rewinds Darbelet. Larbi and I were really kif-kif. We have a last tournament to decide between us in Belarus, and the one who signs the best result goes to the Games. There, we both finish third! As he is vice-world champion and I European champion, it is he who is taken. Well, since the federation absolutely wanted me to go, I was detained in less than 60 kg. “
The Dijonnais will digest the regime badly and will fall in the second round in Athens. But it will recover four years later coming back silver from Beijing, after pushing back the competition of Sébastien Berthelot in less than 66 kg. His last Games since, mounted in 73 kg, he will undergo in 2012 the law of Ugo Legrand, bronze medal in London.
“Large emotional gaps”
“The competition is driving progress,” resumes Darbelet, now converted into personal coaching at the head of Studio Alexis Vastine in Saint-Raphaël, in the Var. The proof, I was medalist then Ugo too. Between Gahié and Pinot, it’s very hard to choose, they are the same, as strong as the other. “Obviously,” HRD “Benboudaoud is preparing for difficult times. “It makes big emotional differences since one of them will be super happy and the other will be devastated, underlines the coach. It is complicated. I don’t apprehend this moment because it’s part of the job. It will have to be done even if it is hard. “
And what about friendship?
Despite this situation conducive to chicayas, you can get away without hating, says Darbelet, not the type to stick needles in voodoo dolls. “My competitors are still my friends today. Yes, it’s complicated: it’s an individual sport, you want your place and everything. I gave all I could in competition, but I ignored the rest. If you start to calculate by saying to yourself “I hope he will lose” … “.
It was not possible to question Gahié and Pinot on the subject (nor on the rest for that matter) but for Benboudaoud, “to my knowledge, there is no animosity”. “There is none in the France team, develops the 1999 world champion. We pay close attention to that. From the moment they are in the Olympic collective, they respect the rules, they are together and we work on the group dynamic. This is one of our strengths. “
French counterexample and epic Japanese duel
That said, it is possible to come across psychodramas without going back to Coubertin’s time. For example, when Frédérique Jossinet and Laetitia Payet were pulling the plug to go to London, in 2012. At the time, it was not only 10 years that separated the first, silver medal at the 2004 Games, from its youngest. “Seriously, who among us has the greatest Olympic potential,” Jossinet proclaimed in The world ? The foreigners I meet regularly tell me that I am super strong and that it would suit them if I did not qualify for the Olympics ”.
Foreign interference or not, it is Payet who will cross the Channel, not without a few sweet words for his elder sister. “I am in the prime of life [26 ans à l’époque]. Her, I think it’s time she hung up the kimono. The wheel spins. In a less belligerent version, and even more dramatic, we think of the epic duel won last December by Hifumi Abe against Joshiro Maruyama to represent Japan at home this summer, in -66 kg.
Paris is far
“These are two monsters who win everything, details Darbelet, still shocked by the scenario. For the last selection, they made a fight that was played out after 20 minutes of golden score ! At the end, coach Kosei Inoue, a judo legend, was in tears! Somewhere, between Marie-Eve and Margaux, it’s a bit the same. You have two serious daughters, who bring back medals, and nice too. You often have affinities with these people, more than with people who are a little wanker. “
In short, we would not like to be called Larbi Benboudaoud in a few days. Even if France is faced with problems of the rich among girls, much more than among men, where the ubiquitous Teddy Riner is the plane tree that hides a forest of much more frail trees. And even if, after all, the “loser” will be able to console herself by thinking of the Paris Games, in barely three years. Benboudaoud puts an ippon to this thesis. “The 2024 horizon is true for young people. But when you are so well ranked, when you are on top and the goal is within reach, the T moment prevails. And time T is now.