Volleyball: before the Olympics, the time for reunion for the Blues, back to competition

504 days… The French volleyball team will therefore have gone 1 year, 4 months and 18 days without an official match between the qualification for the Olympics against Germany, on January 10, 2020, and its first match in the League of Nations in Rimini (Italy), this Friday at 10 am against Bulgaria.

Suffice to say that the reunion in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin), in preparatory training, was awaited with impatience and excitement by the players of Laurent Tillie. “It was like going back to school after the summer holidays,” says Stephen Boyer, who had also skipped the last gathering. Find the comrades and go joyfully to new adventures. "

During these long months, the Tricolores, many of whom play in Italy, have just crossed paths with the championship matches of their respective clubs. “We have lots of stories to tell, laughs Kevin Tillie. The first day, we were in isolation at the hotel waiting for the results of the PCR tests and we all stuck our heads in the hallway to talk to each other, to laugh. We really are a bunch of friends. If it weren't for these guys, I would never have let go of my 16 month old baby girl… ”

With his father as a coach, who will bow out after the Olympics, there was also a part of relief.

“I was very worried because we had not seen each other for a year and a half, admits Laurent Tillie.

It was long, it was heavy, frustrating not to see each other and to lose the momentum of last year.

But we were so happy to meet again, to be together on the pitch, that it was immediately off again.

»At high speed.

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Because after a long forced period of international idleness, we will have to work extra hard in the weeks to come. Before their final preparation in Okinawa (July 4 to 18), the Blues will play a minimum of fifteen matches in blocks of three days until June 23 (plus semi-finals and final if affinities). All in a sanitary bubble that will gauge the resistance of the group.

“We will be vigilant,” explains the coach. We gave them time beforehand and we hope that we will be more focused and that the bubble will go better. But this is the unknown. Between Mulhouse and Rimini, it's like going in a submarine for seven weeks! The tricolor star Earvin Ngapeth would be almost relieved to set sail. "I'm so happy to see people," smiles the receiver-striker. I spent three difficult years in Russia

(Editor's note: in Kazan, which he has just left to return to Modena)

but the last was really hard, without women or children. I've been in solitary confinement for seven months! "

However, shops and restaurants were open there.

"We were allowed out, but what are you doing on your own?"

he says.

There, a bubble with the friends, we will play, do what we like.

We are not going to stay locked in our rooms like animals.

And then, there is a private beach at the hotel… And above all, we know that something big is waiting for us behind.

Without the Games

(Editor's note: where France had failed in the group stage in Rio)

, we would not have left like that far from our families.

"

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Installed in Italy for six years, Jenia Grebennikov apprehends more the Olympic unknown than the transalpine confinement. “We're going to be in military mode,” observes the libero. You just don't have to go wild, stay focused on the goal, prepare yourself physically and technically because you don't go to the Games by feeling. Eighteen Blues made the trip to the Adriatic coast. They will only be twelve on the plane to Asia.

"I wanted to make a turnover but it is impossible because of the bubble where we cannot bring in and leave the players," explains Laurent Tillie. So I took the opportunity to integrate new ones

(Editor's note: Diez, Faure, Meyer and Gueye)

to compensate for injuries or cases of Covid. We are first in the League of Nations to work. We are going to have a roller coaster competition but the priority is to prepare Tokyo. "