Vincent, what inspires you in being part of the team of athletes put together by Decathlon for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games?
Vincent Gerard:
It's great because this team really mixes different sporting cultures.
There are also career moments that can complement each other perfectly, between young people who are just starting out and who will experience their first Games in 2024 and others, like our captain Teddy Riner, who has already experienced everything in this regard.
This brings real richness, united around a brand that has a really good image.
When I was a kid, I remember that when I went to Decathlon with my parents, it was Christmas, I could touch lots of balls, play, discover jerseys... This brand has done a lot for the democratization of sport in France .
I am happy and proud to be part of it because I find that this partnership really makes sense.
And these days, it's not that easy to find.
Two years before the Games, you made a strong decision, perhaps also risky by changing clubs and leaving Paris SG for Saint-Raphaël…
Careers are made of change, and it was not me who decided … It is certain that by going to Saint-Raphaël, I find myself in a very different context which, somewhere, takes me out of my comfort zone.
It's up to me to adapt to a different rhythm, for example, since I won't be playing a match every three days between the French championship and the Champions League.
It's up to me to succeed in maintaining my level despite this change.
It gives me more time to work, for example.
It's a big change in my life, sporting too.
I must continue to be demanding of myself on a daily basis.
Even if the season only started a month ago, what is your first assessment?
I'm happy with what I've done so far, even though collectively we're struggling.
Now, the characteristic of the top athlete is to always question himself.
If you look at a Teddy Riner, he didn't win all of his titles thinking that everything he did was right all the time.
It's the same for us.
You have to know how to question yourself in another context.
I was very happy in Paris, I had an incredible experience there even if my performances there were not really measured at the height of what they were.
But that's not very important.
Regarding PSG and what you were saying, we have the feeling that this perfect last season – 30 wins in 30 matches – has not been valued at its fair value as an immense achievement…
I don't know if this will ever happen again.
What is certain is that there have often been ultra-dominant teams in the French Championship.
Before Paris, there had been Montpellier, and if we go back even further, we think of OM Vitrolles, the great Nîmes, the Stella Saint-Maur… But never had a team achieved that.
What is unfortunate is this elimination for a goal against Kiel in the Champions League at the last second (in the quarter-finals).
This 30 out of 30 in the league remains an incredible feat, but on the pretext that it was PSG, you are told that it is easy given the means of the club.
Except that people don't realize the daily involvement this requires from everyone.
I remember Mathieu Grébille who told me, when he joined us, that the
one of his friends had told him that in Paris he was going to win everything and that it was going to be easy.
Mathieu had this good reflection by answering him that he did not know if we were going to win everything, but that in any case, he knew that he was joining the club where we worked the most.
This demonstrates that nothing is ever free in high-level sport, in the sense that each victory must be earned on the pitch.
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What you say also applies to the French team, whose successes have been trivialized for too long...
I remember a journalist who spoke to me, after our 3rd place at the 2019 World Cup, of our huge failure.
I was a little twitched because of course, we had wallowed in the semi-finals, me first.
On the other hand, to say that an umpteenth presence in the last world four and a bronze medal is a failure, so I wish many sportsmen chess like ours.
Inevitably, the French team has had such a period of success at some point that it is difficult, if not simply impossible, to compete with.
There is such a pervasiveness of performance in French handball that a defeat in the semi-finals becomes catastrophic.
So no, what was catastrophic was our elimination in the 1st round of Euro 2020 in Norway.
That, yes, it was.
At the Games in 2024, the pressure promises to be very high and everyone will still imagine you in gold…
When you play for the French team, you learn to live with this pressure.
You know that you are necessarily one of the contenders for the final victory, especially when the competition takes place at home.
The last two times France hosted a World Cup, in 2001 and 2017, it ended with two titles.
It is therefore logical that this creates an expectation.
I hope that the saying "never two without three" will come true in 2024. We are going to give ourselves the means to be efficient.
We know that the expectation will be enormous but we will have to know how to deal with it, to use it without it inhibiting us.
But whatever happens, it's very exciting to experience the Games at home.
How did you win the Tokyo Games, could you be tempted, at least on a personal level, to want to copy and paste in terms of preparation?
I don't know, it's complicated… I learned from some of my mistakes.
I know better now what to do and especially what not to do.
For such a competition, I think it's important to put yourself in a bubble, not to watch what people say.
Tokyo was perfect for this with the pandemic context.
In Paris, I think all French athletes will have to beware of this.
We must not say that we are in the great circus of French sport.
This will undoubtedly be the main difficulty in preparing them.
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This 2024 Olympic tournament promises to be the toughest in history since the host country, France, is a favorite, unlike previous editions in London, Beijing or Tokyo...
Brazil was not a gift in 2016. We had eliminated them in the quarters and it had been very complicated.
But it's true that this tournament promises to be even tougher.
It will be impossible to tear yourself apart in a match because the consequences could be felt very quickly.
And then there is this Olympic atmosphere which changes everything, which pushes some to transcend themselves.
The Games offer a different complexity from a World Championship or a Euro.
You mentioned the French successes at home during the 2001 and 2017 Worlds. Each time, the final took place in Paris. In 2024, if there is a final, it will have to be won in Lille...
Bercy is such a legendary hall for French handball that it would have been great.
But on Games, there are so many different stakes that we cannot draw the cover only to us.
I am very happy that we can play our group matches in Paris (at the start, handball was to take place exclusively in Lille, editor's note), that we can live the Olympic experience here.
It's good that we were heard and that in good intelligence, we found a good way to work with basketball.
And Pierre-Mauroy, if we manage to go that far, it's a magnificent, huge room, in which I have very good memories.