Yes, absolutely, you can be world champion in 2022, be among the best triathletes of your generation and still not have your ticket to the Olympic Games. This is the funny situation experienced by Léo Bergère, who will fight in 2024 to hope to win the ticket for Paris. The Isérois, who spent part of his childhood in a tribe in New Caledonia, is ambitious.
At 27, Léo Bergère returned, in our show “The Crusaders You Know”, broadcast on Twitch and on 20 Minutes TV, on his last months, the enormous competition in the French team, and the small points of improvement which he will allow, if he keeps the same form as at the end of the season, to get his ticket for the Olympics.
How do we deal with not having yet obtained our ticket to the Olympic Games?
It’s true that I would have gone on vacation, at the end of the 2023 season, with my ticket in my pocket. But that was not the case, because the density is such in France that two athletes [Pierre Le Corre et Dorian Coninx] were better than me this season and met the criteria. But I don’t despair, I remain confident, and if I show the same level of performance next season, I will be there. But it’s not done yet.
A third place for the Olympics will be between you and Vincent Luis. How will this happen?
To put it simply, whoever shows a high level at the start of 2024 will be taken into the team. Vincent is a great friend, and he always took me under his wing when I arrived in the French team a few years ago. I would have preferred not to play this last place against him. But we know how to put things into perspective, and we know how to be great friends outside of the competition and we know how to fight each other when we’re in the competition. But it’s true that the four guys, when we are at our best, we can win the race. Now there are only three places and the hardest part is almost qualifying. We all mature in the last two years, which is why we end up with a great generation. This density, this confrontation pulls us all up, because we manage to put things into perspective and not pull each other in the way at times when we need to be united.
This exceptional density can also be an asset when developing racing strategies…
If we are realistic, at the moment, we do not have the level to beat the Englishman Alex Yee and the New Zealander Hayden Wilde. On the other hand, we can hurt them on the swimming part and the cycling part and create gaps. We can do it if we get together. And each time we implemented this strategy, a Frenchman won the race, as recently as in Pontevedra, in the grand final of the world championship, with Dorian Coninx. On the French side, they are working quite a bit on this idea. And instead of doing 3-4-5, we can do a little better.
You’ve been back training for a month. Is your preparation designed to arrive at full strength on the qualifying World Cup stages, or are you looking further ahead with the Games?
We start the season on March 8 in Abu Dhabi. Me, I’m going to build my season on the Olympics, and I’m not going to focus on the period which will precede the Games, because that would be setting the wrong objectives. But I know that we will have to show a great level of performance at the start of the season. In any case, I changed coaches during the 2023 season with the aim of progressing in the three disciplines. I have every interest in being very strong at the start of the year if I want to claim a medal later.
Precisely, your change of coach was to improve yourself, particularly in running…
I had solid foundations with my former trainer. But I lacked some speed qualities, especially in sprinting at the end of the race, to get the victory or the podium. This change was beneficial. When it is well thought out, change can only be positive, and I had no reason to complain at the end of the season about having taken the plunge. There, we have a winter ahead of us to work, so we have a little less pressure than last year.
You also work with a mental trainer. How has this helped you?
I haven’t always been confident enough and aware of my level compared to my competitors. So I will tend to put myself behind some who were largely beatable or at least with whom I could fight. With mental preparation work, and Marie-Laure Brunet, with whom I have been working for two years, I was able to become aware of all this and work on solutions to break down these barriers that I have in my head which prevent me to go for a victory. For the last places that separate us from victory, it is often in the head that it is played out.
You finished fifth in the Olympic test event in Paris, where we mainly talked about the quality of the Seine…
These discussions around this subject have not affected me too much. We are used to swimming in waters that are not very clean. We are often in big cities. In Yokohama (Japan), it is a large industrial port, in Hamburg too. The Seine, as long as the sewers did not overflow, we were ready to compete. We didn’t find it so bad, it made us smile.
You won the last Triathlon Super League, a format with shorter distances (300m swim, 4km bike ride, 1.6km run) and eliminations from behind, shortcuts… Is that the future of triathlon?
The goal of this format is that it looks a little better on television, that it is more dynamic than the Olympic format, where it is difficult to have big racing movements, big turnarounds. There, it’s very short, we cover several times these distances, there are eliminations, chases… The spectator is kept in suspense throughout the event. These are formats that I also appreciate, during the race I want to attack, to try movements, and it is a format which totally allows these offensive strategies. And it allows you to work on the qualities you need to have for the mixed relay, which is an Olympic event.
For several months, you have been fighting for two, since your partner, Angelica Olmo, also a triathlete, has stopped due to Lyme disease…
Her situation and her illness, which she discovered a year ago, touch me a lot. She is an athlete who sees her project, her daily life suddenly stop. As a result, she tries to communicate about her illness via social networks, because when we are athletes, we often have to run in the forest, and we can be bitten by ticks, which happened to her. She tries to raise awareness about this disease, which is progressing in France and Germany, but which is very little recognized. Behind my sports project, I rely on her, she always gives good advice on training and life choices. I’m really sad to see her like this.