Olympic Games: Pascal Martinot-Lagarde: "Have a good race and finish 5th, I don't care"

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What is your feeling after this 5th place in the 110m hurdles final?

Pascal Martinot-Lagarde:

“When I arrived at these Games, I didn't have much hope. I had made a chaotic preparation and I only really trained for the last two weeks. Previously it was just DIY. So I thought I was trying to give my all, but without great ambition. But not being ambitious is not being Pascal. So when I did the playoffs, I thought, “Oh, that's cool”. But especially when I did 13''25 in the half, rather easily on the intentions, there I said to myself that there was something to look for. Then, the characteristic of a champion is to be ready on D-day and to give everything for the final, which I did today. 13''16 is the best time of my season. It was a full race, I dropped off all that Ihad to file but that was not enough.

Read also: Olympics: athletes at the peak of progress

Do you have any regrets about this final?

I am very disappointed but have no regrets.

In Rio, I finished 4th.

Here I am doing 5th.

I just wanted to bring home a medal, I wanted to do better than rio but I did not succeed.

Now if it's going to take me a little while to digest this one, but I'm still hungry to try and do something in Paris in 2024. I've won medals in every championship, indoor or outdoor, but never at the Olympic games.

So I'm really hungry to try to add this line to my track record.

We have the impression that with a few more meters, you could have finished on the podium because you finished strong…

My discipline is the 110m hurdles, not the 113 or 114. And then for once, Parchment which s 'imposes in 13''04, if I don't say anything stupid, I'm making a better start than him. So I can only blame myself because my strong point has never been the departure, it is after. And yet, he managed to dominate me in the second half of the race. 13''04, it's not a time that scares me or impresses me. I'm just disappointed not to be at this level.

Technically, your race seems very correct…

Technically, even if I have to watch it with a rested head, it seems to me that it was a very good race.

But that's not what interests me.

Have a good race and finish 5th, I don't care.

What I want is a race that brings home a charm.

If it had taken an ugly race to get there, then I would have preferred to do a really ugly one.

Read also: The medal table

The key, for you, would therefore be to finally be able to live a full preparation…

That's exactly it. I think that a complete preparation will lead me to approach the competition in a much more serene way. There, at each turn, it was an acceleration, towards discovery. But I was not well adjusted. Now, this is not inevitable, but I am convinced that normal preparations will no longer exist for Pascal Martinot-Lagarde. At the age of 29, I accumulated hundreds of thousands of supports, I passed tens of thousands of hurdles, I smashed my body… So a so-called normal preparation seems complicated to me now. I'm going to have to tinker with my old carcass, and that's fine with me because my old carcass takes me 5th today. This jersey (he shows his),one day, he will bring back a medal ”.