It’s as if he had won. On Monday evening, Bolade Apithy let his joy explode in the stands of the Grand Palais after the victory of his wife, Manon Apithy-Brunet, in the women’s sabre final against her compatriot Sara Balzer. The 38-year-old sabre fencer, eliminated Saturday in the 8th final of the individual event, ran to join his lady on the track to celebrate his Olympic gold medal, after being briefly stopped in his tracks by security.
In the sequence shared on his Instagram accounthe kisses her and carries her under the applause of the audience, even if it means getting her tangled in his still connected wire. “It was a lot of emotion,” he confides to our colleagues at Eurosport. “It had to come out and it came out.”
“It’s really just happiness and seeing someone you love be happy is, I think, the most beautiful feeling you can feel,” continued the athlete who will return to the track on July 31 to try to win team gold. “You’re a queen, you’re the boss. You did it,” he whispered in her ear after her victory.
“If one wins, the other wins”
Fencers Manon Apithy-Brunet and Bolade Apithy, a couple for eight years, are never far from each other. They train in the same fencing room in Orléans (Loiret) and advise each other, without jealousy or sporting rivalry.
“It’s pure happiness to experience the same emotions, the same stress,” Manon Apithy-Brunet confided to France 2 before the Games. “We have the same dream, we do all this together, so if one wins, the other wins,” added the 28-year-old Olympic champion, who will have the opportunity to do a double on August 3 in the team event.
A complicity that is not always easy to manage for their coach, Christian Bauer. “They have to stay in their own sphere. From time to time, they go into each other’s spheres to give advice, which is normal. It can be positive but also very negative,” he explained. In Paris, the couple seems to have found the right balance.
