recruiting foreign coaches, the new French strategy for a successful home Games

Experts, consultants, directors of the French teams. Their functions are diverse. For several months, France has launched a vast operation to recruit foreign coaches. The goal ? Seeking different skills or visions outside our borders to best prepare for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The ultimate goal set by the French sports authorities being to integrate the top 5 of the medal table, a necessary objective to the complete success of JO at home.

For this, several federations, in close collaboration with the National Sports Agency (ANS), have gone to look for the big shots in their field, like the German Jürgen Grobler. The legendary coach of British rowers, the most successful at the Olympic Games, all sports combined, has indeed come out of retirement to join the French team in September 2021, as an executive high performance consultant. His track record is incredible: since 1976, he has brought home at least one gold medal from each Olympic edition in which he has participated.

But Grobler is far from the only talent to have been recruited by the French camp. The Dutch coach Jacco Verhaeren, ten Olympic and nine world titles on the clock, now hires his services to the French swimming federation under the title of director of the French racing and open water swimming teams.

The Ukrainian Vitaly Marinitch has become thehead coach of the men’s team gymnastic, Korean Oh Seon-Tek has been named head coach of the archery, the Cuban Humberto Horta Dominguez is in charge of the women’s boxing team while Spaniard Fernando Rivas has accepted the position of senior manager of badminton, assisted by Lithuanian Kestutis Navickas for singles and Englishman Chris Langridge for doubles. Latest recruitment, ex-Italian legend Andrea Giani was announced on Tuesday March 29 as the successor to Brazilian Bernardo Rezende at the head of the French men’s volleyball team, Olympic champion in title.

The recruitment campaign was driven by Claude Onesta, the high performance manager at the National Sports Agency (ANS), whose mission is to support the federations towards the Paris Games. The challenge is all the greater since France has not entered the top 5 in medals since the London Games in 1948, where it finished third.

To provide itself with the means for its ambitions, the Agency has a total budget of 110 million euros, “to deal with all the performance issues of all the French federations of the Olympic and Paralympic disciplines“, details Claude Onesta. For the “plan coaches 2024”, the ANS relies on a budget of 10 million euros. TAll the presidents of the federations recognize it: without this additional financial aid from the ANS, these recruitments would not have been possible. “My principle is simple: I want the best coaches for Paris 2024. But without the additional budget of the ANS, we would not have had enough capital to surround ourselves with the best.“, supports Bruno Gares, the president of the French Fencing Federation.

This choice to recruit where the talents are is fully assumed within the Agency. “If our supervision is of quality, for certain federations there is a lack of expertise and experience in Olympic or world matters, justifies Claude Onesta. For each federation, we identified the athletes with high potential for medals for Paris, then we looked at the quality of the coaching around them, and identified the points of weakness.

“Sometimes seeking expertise from others when you don’t have it is a solution.”

Claude Onesta, high performance manager at the National Sports Agency (ANS)

at franceinfo: sport

Once the needs analysis had been carried out, the federations identified profiles which the ANS then validated. To compensate for a decline in swimming performance, resulting in a single medal at the Tokyo Olympics, the FFN did not hesitate long in its choice. “Jacco [Verhaeren] had real coaching experience with a track record that few of us have, if at all. He also allowed Australia to once again become a great power in swimming“, develops Julien Issoulié, the DTN of the French Swimming Federation.

For the Archery Federation, the recruitment of Korean Oh Seon-Tek also helps to prepare the future of the France team. “We wanted someone who could coach, train and guide a new generation of French coaches for after 2024, especially for Los Angeles 2028.“, justifies Jean-Michel Cléroy, the president of the FFTA.

Beyond giving the best possible keys to the federations to win medals in Paris, the objective is also that these foreign coaches and experts pass on their know-how for the future. “The objective, and it will be thanks to the heritage of Paris, is to have a culture of performance, instilled in all the actors. We also want the French management to increase its skills“, confirms Yohan Penel, president of the French Badminton Federation.

For this, these new technicians have signed contracts until August 31, 2024, the day after the Olympic Games. “In two years, certain disciplines will have already taken the measure of this contribution of experience. For others, it will be necessary to go further, because the time for acculturation to performance will be longer. It will also be necessary to look, on a case-by-case basis, if the experience proves profitable“, says Claude Onesta.

For the time being, the recruitment of foreign coaches concerns exclusively the Olympic disciplines. “It is difficult to identify great foreign handisport coaches, as there are few of them. However, we are just as committed to the emergence of the Paralympic project, Claude Onesta would like to point out. All the means that we invest are aimed at professionalizing, stabilizing those in place and giving them a status as well as the necessary means to enable them to function better.“

Some federations had already experimented with recruiting foreign technicians, but for many, they had never given them such high-ranking positions, such as in swimming and archery.

These recruitments were, of course, made possible by the additional financial envelope granted by the ANS, but also by a change of mentality driven by the desire to shine in Paris. “The 2024 Games are a turning point. If sport is very well structured in France, we did not have this culture of recruitment outside our borders.“, continues Jean-Michel Cléroy.

However, as a precursor, rowing had already had this experience in the 1990s with another German coach, Eberhard Mund, who had revolutionized the French model. At the helm of the French team for ten years, he allowed the French flags to return to victory on the international stages, including the Olympics. “He created a dynamic, a DNA, which is still in place today. Moreover, what Jürgen Grobler does is based on the foundations established thirty years ago by Eberhard Mund“, Christian Vandenberghe noted.

France is thus following in the footsteps of the previous host countries of the Games. Like Russia in 2014 and South Korea in 2018, China had also launched this hiring campaign with a view to the Winter Games, notably with Frenchman Jean-Pierre Amat for biathlon or Quebecois Simon Lemieux, in charge of the Chinese mogul ski team.

Behind the goal of shining in Paris, the goal is also to transform the model of very high French performance. “The awarding of the Paris Games was the trigger that led to the questioning of the existing system and the desire to renovate it. The previous model dates from the 1960s. If it was effective, it ran out of steam. At the same time, the number of countries investing today in sports performance is much greater than thirty years ago. Without a reform, you end up being overtaken“, emphasizes Claude Onesta.

In this line, international recruitment could still continue within the French federations. “Everyone is constantly looking. We are also working on the potential arrival of a Japanese coach in judo“, slides Claude Onesta. However, “there shouldn’t be a fad“, he warns. Grade appreciated by Ludovic Royé, president of the DTN association: “Si in some cases, recruiting abroad can be a good idea, you have to be careful not to fall into the belief that foreigners are necessarily better than the French“.

However, will two years be enough to achieve the long-awaited goal of the world top 5 in the medal table? Nothing is less sure. “To reach the top 5, it would have been necessary to put the means well before, deplores Christian Vandenberghe of the rowing federation, who nevertheless welcomes the ANS’s undeniable financial support. When the English won everything in 2012, they had prepared their Games ten years before. We have to do that in two years.”