Paris (AFP)

Dripping with sweat, panting breath and confused spirit after feeding hooks and uppercuts, he moves his pawns on the chessboard in search of lucidity: born in the imagination of the designer Enki Bilal, chessboxing is now a real sport combining boxing and chess.

The hero's name is Nikopol. In 1992, in "Froid Ecuador", the latest installment of the Nikopol Trilogy (Ed Casterman), he triumphed in an epic combat combining the strength of boxing and the intelligence of chess. Twenty-seven years later, the fictional story comes in a sports discipline, which landed in France after being structured in Germany in the 2000s.

"At one point, I wanted my characters to confront each other in a spectacular, sporty way, just like anything sport has ever done, I'm going to try to find a sport that will be the very essence of the sport. excellence of the human being, namely his supreme intelligence and his strength ", tells AFP Enki Bilal.

"What happens to me right away is chess, and boxing is also important as nobility, behind violence there is a whole philosophy of movement, of space. ring, "continues the French author, become the godfather of this new sport he finds fascinating.

Ten years after the comics, a Dutch artist, Iepe Rubingh transposes this narrative element of anticipation into reality. He organizes the first fight - of which he is one of the two protagonists - creates the International Federation, the World Chess Boxing Organization (WCBO) before multiplying the duels around the world via the Intellectual Fight Club (IFC).

- "It breaks stereotypes" -

Today, there are about ten national federations for some 3,500 fighters - especially in Germany, England and India. France, which holds its world champion in 2017 with Thomas Cazeneuve, is then structured with a federation, a team from France (currently meeting in Sète) and a very first gala of fights, which will be held on November 9 at Cabaret Wild in Paris.

"It's the most complete sport, we work the body and the mind, it breaks the stereotypes, like that of the fighter who is a brute and that of the chess player who is a 'geek' not at all sporty, first class, and who will finish computer scientist, "said Thomas Cazeneuve, chessboxing world champion and recruitment consultant.

Thomas Cazeneuve was fed chess as a child before kickboxing as a teenager to today combine both practices.

"You have to succeed in going from boxing to chess by trying to keep his lucidity so that the level of chess does not go down." We usually play chess in a room without noise, with a bottle of water, his taste, there, we bleed, we hurt, we're out of breath, we do not know where we live and we have to play, "says the chessboxer, who runs a lot to train with a chessboard in his pocket.

A chessboxing bout comes in 11 rounds: 6 rounds of chess and 5 rounds of boxing (40-45 min total if the 11 rounds are over). Chess is played in 'blitz' (in a given time) and the fighters are shirtless, without a boxing helmet but with a soundproofing helmet to sit in front of the chessboard to be isolated from the box. atmosphere of the audience.

- Bilal dreams of the Olympics -

The fight is won by either KO or checkmate. It happens very rarely that it is by decision of the judges.

"It's the castagne, there is a side-in-between", says the president of the federation in France (based in Montpellier), Guillaume Salançon, for whom chessboxing is a sport similar to "corrida, a show where something is going to happen. "

"It's an artistic performance, it's completely mystical, powerful, moving, what you do not necessarily have in the sport," he says.

In Paris, a club opened just a month ago. They are already a dozen to hurry on Sunday morning.

"There is an approach that is quite playful in switching between two sports: learning after a very intense effort to calm down, to refocus, to ask oneself, in fact it is also useful at many levels. ", says a new follower, Lucas Graffan.

And why not dream of seeing chessboxing at the Olympics. That's what Enki Bilal thinks today.

© 2019 AFP