France will not leave empty-handed. On the last day of the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, the French quartet of Ludvy Vaillant, Gilles Biron, David Sombe and Téo Andant won the silver medal in the men’s 4x400m on Sunday August 27. They signed a national record in 2 min 58 sec 45. Only the United States beat them (2’57”31). Great Britain completes the podium (2’58”71).
As the very last events of the nine days of competition in the Hungarian capital loomed, the French team was heading for an embarrassing zero point. But the tricolor torchbearers took on the role of saviors in extremis, as the decathlete Kévin Mayer had done a year earlier at the Worlds in Eugene (Oregon, United States), obtaining gold for him.
With only one silver medal on the clock, France only finished 27th in the nations ranking.
France’s Alice Finot was fifth in the 3,000m steeplechase, cutting almost four seconds from her French record, which was set at 9:06:15. early June (09’10”04). “I have stars in my eyes, it’s a really precious moment,” commented the athlete.
Not enough to make you forget that the blue-white-red balance sheet is embarrassing, eleven months before the Olympic high mass at home. Beyond the podiums, the Blues compile a reduced number of finalist places (top 8). Eight, when their all-time low is six (in 1983 and 2019).
“The record is not good,” agrees with AFP the director of high performance at the French Athletics Federation (FFA) Romain Barras, who, failing to shine, had urged his troops to raise their heads , with a lot of metaphors ranging from the superhero’s cape to the wolves hunting in the forest. “My biggest disappointment was the inability of the majority of athletes to transcend themselves on D-Day, beating their personal best, their best score of the season or finishing in a better place” than their ranking world, he regrets.
This is the other vertigo of this French selection, however enlarged: out of 56 athletes entered individually, only ten achieved their best performance of the season, six of whom improved their personal best. “What hurts is the lack of ability to reach the finals, retains the Olympic and world medalist in the 200m Christophe Lemaitre at the microphone of Eurosport. We always want to be optimistic, but one year (from the Olympics), it’s difficult to change everything, to find solutions to help athletes get through this. »
Amid this disastrous record, a few rare glimmers of hope, with Sasha Zhoya over 110m hurdles, Thibaut Collet on the pole vault, Alice Finot over 3,000m steeplechase. But the situation is sufficiently alarming for the Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra to summon the leaders of the FFA to come and explain themselves: the trio André Giraud, president, Patrick Ranvier, national technical director, and Romain Barras are expected at the ministry on Tuesday.
In the end, the trend is only taking hold for the French athlete, who has been rocking seriously since 2019. “At some point, I can’t meet everyone’s expectations. I can’t assume to be the only one to make medals for the French team, “lamented Kevin Mayer, spearhead of the Blues, after his retirement in Budapest on the decathlon.
