Tokyo Olympics: the French handball players deprived of their captain Siraba Dembélé

Her return in the tricolor jersey after a maternity break in 2019 was absolutely decisive during the European Championship in December.

Under his impulse, the French women had won the money.

A momentum broken due to an injury, synonymous with the end of an angry career with the Blue.

The left winger and captain of the French handball team Siraba Dembélé, 34, is forced to forfeit the Tokyo Olympics (July 23-August 8).

Sunday in the quarter-finals second leg of the Champions League with his club Bucharest, Siraba Dembélé was injured in the final action in the last seconds.

Additional medical examinations carried out on Tuesday revealed a complete rupture of the right Achilles tendon, synonymous with the end of the season for the leader of the France team.

“This injury necessarily falls at the least ideal time.

It was to be my last competition with the France team and it's hard to swallow, "reacted" Sira "quoted in the FFHandball press release.

“It was a continuation of what we've been going through together for almost five years and it's hard not to end this cycle with them.

You have to accept it, it's part of the game. ”The player thus intended to sublimate a record already provided, with a title of European champion (2018), world (2017), vice-Olympic champion (2016).

Keep "the spirit of what Siraba had put in place"

A little over three months before the opening of the 2020 Olympics, where French handball players will be contenders for Olympic gold, this is a blow for coach Olivier Krumbholz, who loses the leader of the France team in recent years.

There is a form of challenge for the team to function without it, but if everyone gives the best of themselves, we must be able to regain our cohesion, with the spirit of what Siraba had set up ”, estimated the coach.

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He also wished her good rehabilitation, "because there are longer-term issues for her, with a second career and a second life where her physical integrity will be just as important".

The operation is scheduled for Wednesday, then will follow a long process of rehabilitation.

To replace Dembélé in his position of left winger, Krumbholz has several cards in his game, between Messina Manon Houette, who is gradually returning to his best level after two operations on both knees in early 2020, the Bisontine Chloé Valentini, or the captain Coralie Lassource from Brest.