Choice catch for the French Badminton Federation. She announced on Wednesday that she had recruited the Spaniard Fernando Rivas, coach of the 2016 Olympic champion in singles, Carolina Marin, as senior sports performance manager, two and a half years from the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Dual function
The world-renowned technician will always remain the coach of Carolina Marin, also three-time world champion (2014, 2015 and 2018) and will divide his time between the two functions.
The president of the FFBad Yohan Penel has chosen Fernando Rivas for “add internationally recognized badminton expertise” to the coaching staff already in place.
Fernando Rivas (44) has signed a two and a half year part-time contract with the federation, i.e. until the 2024 Olympics. In a press conference, he declared to be “very motivated by the idea of making this French team progress”a team which according to him has a lot of potential, the results in the youth categories being very interesting.
Shine in 2024 to prepare for 2028
The French badminton team was disappointing at the last Olympic Games in Tokyo, with no player able to make it out of the group stages of the tournament. The idea for the national technical director is “to prepare as well as possible for Paris and to use these Games for 2028”. “We are not currently able to guarantee medals in Paris among the able-bodied”he added.
The arrival of Rivas is the latest in a series of recruitments of major foreign technicians in French sport for the Olympic Games at home in 2024.
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After the Dutchman Jacco Verhaeren, enrolled by the French Swimming Federation or the German Jürgen Grobler by that of rowing, the South Korean Oh Seon-Tek, multi-medal coach of the Korean archery team at the 2000 Olympics and from 2012, for example, was appointed head coach of the France team at the beginning of February.
