Watch out for the big gap.
During the Olympic Games officially opened this Friday during a closed-door ceremony, the French delegation, with its 378 members, will have to be careful not to put the Parisian plow of 2024 before the Tokyo oxen of 2021. , there is always a risk of not taking advantage of the present moment, without ensuring a bright future.
Especially in matters of Olympism, test of D-Day, pragmatically, and of a life, poetically.
To discover
The full program of the Olympic Games
LIVE - Watch the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games
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Even if the one-year postponement of the Games in Tokyo reduced by a quarter the wait between them and those in Paris, they are - already - strongly anchored in the heads of the main officials of French sport.
Starting with that of the newly elected president of the CNOSF, Brigitte Henriques, capable of an impressive large gap when it comes to evoking blue ambition in the Japanese capital.
Namely
"to do better than in Rio"
and
"to prepare for 2024 by comforting those who will be there"
.
And in the midst of this vast objective, how many medals will end up in the French purse?
If the idea is to do better than in 2016, it will therefore be necessary to win 43 podiums in Tokyo, which would equal the record established in 2008 in Beijing.
Neither simple nor impossible.
The 40 medals bar
The main complexity of establishing a prognosis lies in the vagueness reigning due to the pandemic.
Between certain team sports which have resumed their frantic pre-pandemic calendar and other more fragile disciplines, such as fencing which has only given rise to one major official competition in one year, it is difficult to see clearly. at the hierarchical level.
So much so that some sportsmen, as an aside, already qualify Tokyo as “
games of chance
”.
An obviously excessive formula, but which symbolizes, even more than usual, the prospect of witnessing great and beautiful surprises.
And therefore inevitably to sad and painful disappointments.
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Olympic Games: a tandem of French flag bearers strong in symbols and ambitious
Reasonably, if the bar of 40 medals appears in the strings of the hexagonal troops, that of the 15 Olympic titles - the record established in Atlanta in 1996 - constitutes a paragon of success difficult to reach. Or, put another way, the gold diggers Teddy Riner, Clarisse Agbegnenou, Kevin Mayer, Vincent Luis or the two handball teams, to name a few, will not be allowed to make mistakes. , under penalty of capsizing the French boat. However, at the Games, it is very rare that all the favorites are present. All the more so in the context that we have just mentioned. Adversity, pressure, excess of confidence, unexpected failure are all possible stones in the sneakers of the greatest champions.
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Considering erasing the Beijing and / or Atlanta records is therefore more pure optimism than infused science. On the other hand, like the young 16-year-old table tennis player Prikhita Pavade, setting a date for Paris 2024 seems a more accessible goal. Unless our women's judo is a hit like boxing had succeeded in Rio (6 medals), that our handball finds its place at the top, that Kevin Mayer breaks his own world record in decathlon, that Renaud Lavillenie recovers his own pole vault, that the wind blows hard in our sails in the bay of Tokyo, that our fencers confirm their status as the biggest purveyors of medals, that the new disciplines (climbing, skateboarding, karate and surfing as far as we are concerned) do not smile at us big… With so many ifs, we would bottle Paris. It would be good,because it is a bit the goal of French sport visibly in Tokyo.