“It’s a new page, not an end! From the outset, Yohan Penel, President of the French Badminton Federation, indicated that while he was delighted to have been able to recruit two experts in their field to take care of the high level, he hoped that these arrivals would allow to validate with medals the hopes born in recent months on the pitch. “After the appointment of a new DTN (Jérôme Careil), and a general manager (Éric Salanoubat), this is a new building block. »
An ambitious but necessary construction, as indicated by Jérôme Careil, the National Technical Director installed near Tonquédec (22), when we met him on his return from the Tokyo Games. Where the successful record of the Paralympic Games: gold for Lucas Mazur, silver for Mazur and Rennaise Faustine Noël, was not enough to catch up with the disappointing one of the Olympics: no exit from the pool for Thom Gicquel, Xuefei Qi and Brice Leverdez.
Former DTN of American Football and Ice Sports
“To transform the system from solid foundations, especially at the youth level”, the National Technical Director therefore called on Thierry Soler, “who comes to bring his outside perspective, it is important to stop being only between baddies”. At 54, the Isérois has a big sporting CV since he was national coach then DTN of American football, DTN of the ice sports federation from 2014 to 2016 and, recently, head of the Performance Pole at the National Institute Sport and Physical Education (Insep), where the presentation press conference was held on Wednesday. “I wanted to get back closer to the athletes and coaches, explains Soler, for whom “collective work must feed individual ambitions”.
Pilot of the entire performance project, in charge of preparing the Paris 2024 Games as well as possible, but also those of 2028, Thierry Soler – who, within the framework of Olympic preparation, is on a renewable two-year mission – will be able to rely a new top-notch senior manager, Spaniard Fernando Rivas. If no one in the big bad family (172,123 members on March 9) has forgotten the relative failure of the experience of Dane Peter Gade (performance director, 2015-2018), the historic coach of Carolina Marin, Olympic champion in Rio and triple world champion, arrives in France in a completely different context and with a different project.
Fernando Rivas wants to “dream big”
“I did part of my studies in Sports Sciences in 2000 in France”, details, in very good French, the native of Granada (44 years old), who will continue to train Carolina Marin in Madrid and will be present for a week. out of two in France, notably in the badminton division of Insep.
“The only Olympic medal-winning technician who speaks French, as President Yohan Penel pointed out, Fernando Rivas, under contract until August 31, 2024, arrives with a method that has worked wonders with the champion of Huelva but has also carried its fruit with the generation of Spanish junior European champions in 2015. “A method based on the four dimensions: tactical, technical, physical and mental”, says Rivas, who wishes to rely on “a pool of players that I have observed with attention and with which one can do beautiful things. You have to dream big! »
And do not have any complexes, especially against Asian badminton players, as Bretillien Thom Gicquel and his partner Delphine Delrue have already demonstrated, who have made a place for themselves at the table of the best in the world.
