Tokyo (AFP)

Claire Bové and Laura Tarantola gave France their ninth medal at the Tokyo Olympics by finishing second in the rowing light-weight two-pair final.

Their silver medal comes on top of the gold medal of Matthieu Androdias and Hugo Boucheron, won on Wednesday as a couple.

French rowing is therefore doing better in Tokyo than in Rio, from where the tricolor rowers came away with gold in the men's lightweight sculls, and bronze in the lightweight coxless foursome.

At the end of a particularly tight race, the French women were only beaten by the Italians Valentina Rodini and Federica Cesarini, ahead of the Dutch Marieke Kaijser and Ilse Paulis, vice-world champions, who did most of the work. the race in the lead.

"When we cross the line, we don't really know how many we are. And when I see the panel (of the results), I say to myself + it's not true they must have been wrong +. It was a big dream" for us, reacted Laura Tarantola at the microphone of France Televisions after the race.

Bové, too, does not really "realize": "At the start I was in the moon, then I concentrated on the boat and the race, I listened to the Dutch next to us. I don't know how many there are, ”explained the one who two years ago was still watching the Winter Olympics on television, wondering how she would react if she won a medal.

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Vice-champions of Europe in 2019, Tarantola, 27, and Bové, 23, had won this year the World Cup stage played at the end of April in Zagreb, while Tarantola was returning from a back injury.

They had finished third in Lucerne (Switzerland) a month later.

© 2021 AFP