Paris (AFP)
To win esport competitions, training on video games is no longer enough. Today, to be 100% of their capacity, the best gamers are preparing themselves as athletes and more and more pro teams are surrounded by former top athletes.
"We thought for a long time that we had to spend a lot of hours on the game to be good when it is wrong," says AFP Fabien Devide, aka "Neo", the president of the main sports team of France Vitality. "If you work a few hours a day on the game effectively and that next, we have a healthy lifestyle, rest, a diet that goes with it, we realize that the performance is increased tenfold", adds -he.
With the professionalization of esport, that is video game competitions, pro teams have begun to integrate the physical dimension of their discipline, a recent awareness.
- Leave nothing to chance -
"In the game, it's not something that was put forward at all 3-4 years ago," said Lucas "Cabochard" Simon-Meslet, Vitality player on League of Legends. "Now we really leave no room for chance so that our performances are really better."
To put all this into practice, more and more teams are using athletes to coach their players.
"There is a real movement in the esport which is to be surrounded by experts of the sport because one sees that almost everything which makes gain in the sport, it is what will make win in the esport ", says Nicolas Maurer, the pair of" Neo "at Vitality. "When you are at the top level and everyone is exceptional on the game, it's all the little details that will make it possible to win titles.The difference can be made on a micro-decision after a final of four hours of play so you have to be prepared physically, nervously, mentally. "
In the esport, the first to have understood it are the Danes of the Astralis team who recruited as of 2016 the old handball player Kasper Hvidt, keeper of the European champion team in 2008, to optimize their performances in competition . An example followed by many teams.
In France, the ex-tennis player Julien Benneteau has thus recently become sports director of the Gameward team, as well as the double Olympic swimming champion Yannick Agnel, at the Marseille structure MCES, recently crowned world champion on the game Clash of Clans .
- "Living environment" -
"I take care of all the methodology around video game training, physical preparation, warm-ups, recovery, nutritional, medical and psychological monitoring," Agnel tells AFP.
On the Vitality side, Matthieu Péché, multiple world canoe-kayak champion and bronze medalist at the Rio Olympics, hired a few months ago as Counter Strike team manager. .
"As a former high level athlete, I bring all the tools I used while I was an athlete and that I can transmit", explains Matthieu Péché, who finds in the esport the sensations of the high level .
"It's all stupid things like going to bed early, playing sports, bringing them a living environment, in the game they're already very good but if they're physically good, maybe in the game they'll go even further, "he says.
What to do a little more the connection between sport and esport.
"For the most part, it is young people who deserve as much respect as many top athletes," said Yannick Agnel. "Because they are going to seek a goal only attainable by people who are counted on the fingers of one hand."
© 2019 AFP