For an hour, she sat in front of two French journalists, answered the questions that were put to her, then dropped the mask for a final photo session.
All of this may seem terribly banal for a top athlete.
The meeting organized on Sunday February 6 in Beijing at the V-Continent, an official hotel of the 2022 Winter Olympics, was nevertheless quite an event.
The ex-tenniswoman Peng Shuai, object of a planetary mobilization since November and her accusations of rape against a cacique of the Chinese regime, agreed to speak to the newspaper L'Équipe.
The first time with a foreign and independent media.
What did she say?
Nothing really new on the case as such.
And the two reporters from the sports daily expected it.
The former tennis player repeated what she had been able to declare in recent weeks to the media close to the government or the IOC.
“I never said that anyone had sexually assaulted me (…) This post has given rise to a huge misunderstanding from the outside world.
I hope that the meaning of this post will no longer be distorted.
»
The message in question is dated November 2, 2021. Deleted after only thirty minutes, it accused former Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli of having raped her three years ago, under the supervision of the latter's wife, planted in front of the bedroom of their home.
"Since you weren't ready to take on an affair with me then, why did you come back?"
Why did you take me to your house and force me to have sex?
I have no evidence and there was no way to leave any on the spot, ”we can read in this extract translated by Liberation.
"That afternoon, after refusing myself to you, I couldn't stop crying," she wrote further.
The authorities are suspected of having censored these revelations, Peng Shuai claims to have erased it on her own.
" Why ?
Because I wanted to, ”she simply affirms, without saying more.
Read also“She is alive but dead socially”: what is Beijing playing with Peng Shuai?
She shows the same confidence about her silence in the weeks that followed her message, a trigger for international mobilization.
“I never disappeared.
It's just that a lot of people, like my friends including from the IOC, messaged me, and it was quite impossible to reply to so many messages.
But, with my close friends, I always stayed in close contact, I chatted with them, answered their emails, I also chatted with the WTA…”
In fact, the doubles specialist, crowned at Wimbledon (2013) and Roland-Garros (2014), did not give any signs of life in public for almost a fortnight.
Even today, it is still impossible to know if she is free to move around, if she has the right to leave China or if she is living under house arrest or not.
What credit can we give to his words?
Like the two interviewers, Jérôme Cazadieu, editorial director of L'Équipe, is not fooled.
Impossible not to doubt the sincerity of the words of the 36-year-old Chinese, who has also decided to retire, weighed down according to her by a painful knee and the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We knew that she would not say that the official version was false and that she had indeed been sexually assaulted by a senior Chinese leader, comments Jérôme Cazadieu.
It's an interview where she can't tell the truth.
»
According to him, the priority was elsewhere: “We especially wanted to see in what physical and moral state she was.
We had to be consistent with our front page of November 20 to tell her that we have not forgotten her and that the mobilization around her is enormous.
It is the role of a media at a given time to be faithful to its values.
»
Where is Peng Shuai?
Here is the front page of L'Équipe for November 20.
pic.twitter.com/vU50UXNorD
– THE TEAM (@lequipe) November 19, 2021
The interview request is dated January 18th.
The Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) accepted it on February 3 after asking the International Olympic Committee (IOC) about the credibility and reputation of the French newspaper.
Questions have been sent upstream.
A request from the player, assures the COC, present in the hotel room via his chief of staff and who provided a first translation.
The Team then secured the services of an independent translator, who produced a transcription faithful to that of the Chinese manager.
The newspaper also obtained that the interview not be reread and be the subject of an inaugural context, which the COC did not want at the start.
Dressed and made up, Peng Shuai appeared rather relaxed, despite a more contracted face when asked about the case.
“She was able to show that she remained worthy, adds Jérôme Cazadieu.
With a few subliminal messages between the lines, especially about her condition as a normal woman and a tennis player, who can be sad and stressed at times.
There is a kind of schizophrenia in her story: at the same time, she knows that the interest around her justifies the control she undergoes, and at the same time, she needs our attention so as not to fall into oblivion. .
»
How is the tennis world reacting?
The feelings are mixed.
The joy of hearing news, the uneasiness and circumspection in the face of his answers.
“I imagine the complexity of such an interview … We do not forget you”, reacted the Angevin Nicolas Mahut, who had invited him to play with him in mixed doubles in the spring of 2022 at Roland-Garros.
I imagine the complexity of such an interview… we don't forget you!#pengshuai @sophiedorgan pic.twitter.com/YfBYFolafF
— Nico Mahut (@nmahut) February 7, 2022
On the side of the Chinese regime, radio silence, of course.
The interview is sufficient in itself as long as it reinforces its positions.
On February 3, the communication strategy around the Peng Shuai case did not deceive anyone.
“I did not follow this case.
Maybe that interests you, but I don't.
I don't know, ”swept the Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye, on the set of Télématin.
🎾 #PengShuai case: "I didn't follow this case [...] it doesn't interest me"
💬 Lu Shaye, Chinese ambassador to France (@AmbassadeChine)@ThomasSotto #8h10actu @francetvsport pic.twitter .com/N8bDyJbSBl
— Telematin (@telematin) February 3, 2022
“Everything is going exactly as some of us anticipated at the end of November… And that's still how it is in China.
Several months after a case, the person reappears, gives a calibrated interview, which allows Beijing to say that the subject is closed, analyzed on Twitter the French researcher Antoine Bondaz.
Whatever she really thinks or has experienced, she cannot express, unfortunately.
This interview will therefore allow the political authorities to say that whoever continues to ask questions necessarily seeks to politicize the affair.
»
In any case, it is not the IOC who will attempt to do so.
"It's not up to us to judge (
what happens
), we also have to listen to what she says," said organization spokesman Mark Adams on Monday.
Peng Shuai was able to dine on February 5 with his boss, Thomas Bach, and must attend several events of the Winter Olympics.