- "I decided to settle in Pau to prepare the Paris 2024 Games": the céiste Denis Gargaud-Chanut announces to "20 Minutes" that he is leaving Marseille.
- The reigning Olympic champion believes that he "cannot work in Marseille". He has been calling for years for the construction of a whitewater stadium.
He started this interview in a taxi, finished it in a station hall. Denis Gargaud-Chanut, 2016 canoe-kayak Olympic champion, is still in transit. Too much. Tired of having spent all his Olympic preparation on the road, the Marseille céiste announced at 20 Minutes his choice to leave Marseille to settle in Pau, less than six months before the Tokyo Olympics.
Why did you make this decision?
I can no longer live in Marseille! I like Marseilles but Marseilles does not love me. I decided to settle in Pau to prepare for the Paris 2024 Games. Marseille will nevertheless be an Olympic city, all my partners are in the region, but I have to train in good conditions.
Isn't that the case in Marseille?
With the Huveaune, we have still water… and I play a white water sport! In 2016, after my Olympic medal, the mayor promised me that he would finance a whitewater stadium if we found half the funding. I called the builder: they were ready to do it at cost because it was a first in France. Elected officials are aware of all this, but this project has no interest in their eyes.
Denis Gargaud Chanut is 5th in this world!
📷 FFCK / KMSP pic.twitter.com/dtkZc3lAil
Your club, the MMCK, still moved in 2018 to new, brand new premises ...
It is not enough to give me a clean shower and a new room. I can't even do my weight training at the club, I have to go to the Swimmers Circle.
In Marseille, young people can learn to canoe, but for the competition part, nothing progresses! Timing is supposedly never the right time. We are one of the most medal-winning clubs in France with Pau, but the legacy of all these medals is not up to what other cities would have done ... In Pau, there is an initiation stage and a world-class competition stadium.
Is it really more comfortable there?
I moved my family at the start of the year to prepare for the Tokyo Olympics and when I see how easy it is to train, how, naturally, I am welcomed… I will stay there, but it's a default choice.
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🥶 = 🛶- ☕️- 🛶-☕️☕️-🛶-☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ ..... 🙅🏽♂️🛀🏽🛌 #canoeslalom
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For four years, I had to leave between 250 and 280 days a year from Marseille to be able to train. I did not see my family, not my children ... And it is not an approach of high level sportsman to tire his body to find an adequate training space. Travel is exhausting.
Is it a heartbreak to leave Marseille?
I've been there since I was two years old, I grew up in the 16th arrondissement, migrated to sports studies in Marseilleveyre, I lived everywhere… It was Marseille that made me! I will also remain licensed in Marseille by affect.
This city is like a mother to me. But I can't work on it, so I'm leaving. I chose not to go to Paris, because it would be the worst affront I could make in Marseille (smile).
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- Canoe
- Kayak
- Olympic Games
- OJ 2020
- Sport
- Marseilles