Paris (AFP)
Never let it down. Top athletes, confined like everyone else, had to find more or less ingenious means to continue their training indoors. Garage, living room or, for the lucky ones, a bit of garden. To maintain their shape, despite the uncertainties about the upcoming calendar.
. Alexandra Recchia, karate
Before the coronavirus pandemic and the imposed confinement, Alexandra Recchia, 31, approached the final straight before the Olympic qualification tournament for karate, the main access ramp to the Tokyo Games for her sport invited for the very first time to the Olympic high mass.
Everything has been turned upside down since then. Stuck at home, in her apartment in the Paris region, she continues to train "as much and as hard" as before, at the rate of "eight to nine weekly sessions, six days a week". Three are devoted to technical work specific to karate.
On its terrace, on the ground floor, a house invention flourished to fill the absence of a punching bag: a lamppost structure decorated with a few targets, all retained by a large flower pot weighted with stones and reinforced by towers of tape. After two and a half weeks of use, the artisanal construction takes the shock. Like its happy owner, "very organized and very rigorous", who lives "very well" this confinement.
. Yoann Offredo, cycling
Its last race dates from February 29 in Belgium. Yoann Offredo, who has not run since, spends his favorite period, the time of spring classics, in his big house built on the heights of Montlhéry in the big suburb south of Paris. To talk physically, to wonder especially about the rest of the season which he already thought at the start of the year to be the last of his career.
Every day, the 33-year-old cyclist joins the room that he has arranged for several years in his basement. The walls testify to his profession, a poster "Allez Yoyo", the combat bibs won during the Tour de France, cycling photos, such as the "campionissimo" Fausto Coppi captured in black and white.
On the program, stretching, squats, home trainer, most often indoors, sometimes outdoors depending on the weather. And envy, because it does not hide moments of weariness in the face of the lack of objective, for lack of knowing the date of resumption of competitions.
. Kilian Le Blouch and Sarah Harachi, judo
Judoka Kilian Le Blouch (-66 kg), virtually qualified for the Olympic Games 2020 before the suspension of competitions due to the pandemic, and confined with his partner Sarah Harachi, also judoka, we organize his week around the whiteboard which sits in the kitchen area of the two-room apartment in Ile-de-France.
If the couple used to write down their weekly schedule before confinement, they now keep it thoroughly up to date. "It helps to keep a certain rhythm, a certain rigor, not to lose the thread," he explains.
The fighter has notably invested in a home trainer which allows him to pedal in the middle of his living room, between sofa and TV. It is also exercised thanks to this suspension which it fixes at its front door, "invented by American soldiers for their sports sessions on the front" and has now become a "star of containment".
His goal ? At least, stay in shape during this unprecedented period, or even take the opportunity to progress on certain points that he does not necessarily have time to work in normal times.
© 2020 AFP