Around Lannionais Jérôme Careil, national technical director of the French Badminton Federation, a staff of around forty people (physical trainers, physiotherapists, coaches), five players from the able-bodied group, including the Breton Xuefei Qi, and eight from the Paralympic group , including the Bretons David Toupé and the bronze medalist Faustine Noël, put their bags down at the Emeria thalassotherapy center in Dinard.
Taking stock of the Games
“Since Tokyo, we have had an order from the National Sports Agency to debrief the Olympics, in order to see what we need to improve to plan for the next games. At the same time, we had the opportunity to have a partnership between the federation and the Emeria group,” explains Jérôme Careil.
Workshops to return to the Olympiad are organized, with shared time, in order to optimize and bring out what everyone, coach and player alike, was able to experience and feel. Primary objective: the world championships in France, in August 2025, in Paris, with more French people competing. But the DTN has not completely turned the Olympic page, which remains “very positive, with a touch of frustration, all the same, because, among the able-bodied, we did not have bad games but we missed this a little extra soul to go further in the final table… That’s what we had in the paras, with two gold medals and one bronze. We met the objectives.”
“Great experience”
The actors of the Olympic Games also keep unforgettable memories. “It was a great experience. The atmosphere was incredible. But under the pressure, I did not play at my best level,” reacts Xuefei Qi, who hopes, this year, to fly the colors of his club, BC Rostrenen, in the Top 12.
“The adventure was beautiful,” for David Toupé. “We gave the best of ourselves. But facing the Top 6 in the world and the Asian armada, we did not make it out of the groups. Of course, there remains a little disappointment but I think our Olympics were a success and, personally, I had never seen such intense competition… I still get chills. »
Bronze medalist in Paralympics, in mixed doubles, Faustine Noël from Rennes returns “to the burning public who pushed us enormously. After a complicated year of qualification, it was important to be supported, because it was not a foregone conclusion,” underlines the member of the Rennes Étudiant Club, already a silver medalist at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games in mixed, with Lucas Mazur.
Badminton has been an Olympic discipline since the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992, while para-badminton made its official debut in 2020, at the Tokyo Paralympic Games.
