Tokyo (AFP)
Teddy Riner's loss in the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Olympics on Friday comes at the end of an Olympiad where he was scarce on the tatami mats, and upset by his first loss in ten years, plus a recent knee injury .
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Five years, seven tournaments
For Riner, 32 years old since the beginning of April, the Olympiad leading from Rio to Tokyo was that of breaks, chosen or suffered.
The post-JO-2016, first, with thirteen months without competition before offering himself on his return two world championships in two months, in +100 kg in Budapest and in all categories in Marrakech, in September and November 2017, to reach the coveted "decima".
The post- "decima" precisely, twenty months without a fight this time, until July 2019. Never, since the start of his career, the double Olympic heavyweight champion (2012 and 2016) had cut so long.
The one finally imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic last year.
So much so that in the five years since Rio, Riner has participated in only seven tournaments and delivered only thirty fights, against sixty between 2012 and 2016, and more than 80 between 2008 and 2012.
Too few ?
"Teddy returned to Insep at the age of fifteen, and since then, every year, he has done the European Junior Championships, the Junior and Senior World Championships, the Olympic Games, Beijing, London, Rio ... He needed to take a breath of fresh air to get off to a better start, with freshness, desire ", justified his trainer Franck Chambily in the summer of 2019.
“It did me a lot of good not to think about the mat, to take time for myself and my family, I needed to breathe,” confirmed Riner.
"But the work to lose weight, to regain my level is even more difficult, he agreed. We must not hide it, the weight of the years, I feel it ..."
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154 wins, then one loss
After his return to competition in the summer of 2019, the Guadeloupe is planning a series of three tournaments in one month in the fall.
But a broken rib in training after the first stops him in his tracks and deprives him of judo for about a month.
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"It slowed him down, it wasn't a big deal," Chambily explains.
At the beginning of February 2020, when the Tokyo Games are still scheduled for the summer, Riner lines up for the Paris tournament with the ambition to "immediately assert himself" but, according to Chambily, at "60%" of his optimal shape.
"He's still a bit heavy. He needs to lose weight, and in terms of benchmarks, he lacks competition, and training in judo and physique," says the coach.
It does not forgive: static and borrowed, he was surprised in the third round by the Japanese N.2, Kokoro Kageura.
The end of a series of 154 fights won, nearly nine and a half years long.
"It is better that it happens to me now", positive the ten-time world champion.
But, in fact, Riner is no longer invincible.
He even lost a second time in October, more anecdotally, at the French team championships (against Terhec).
We can imagine that these pods in his breastplate changed a lot of things in the minds of his future opponents.
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Five months from the Olympics, an injured knee
However, 2021 is off to a good start.
After a studious confinement - Riner is himself surprised - and eleven months without international competition, he won convincingly at the Doha Masters in January.
On the scale, its weight has stabilized around 140 kg, the lowest since 2012. The reward for a strictly regulated diet.
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But Riner comes up against a new obstacle: at the end of February during an internship in Morocco, he injured his knee during a training fight.
"At that time, I thought I was going to take seven months and that it was screwed up," he told AFP.
The tear of the posterior cruciate ligament finally diagnosed - remained secret until the day before the Tokyo Games - earned him two months with a splint and without judo.
The wound too much?
"It's been two (last) very tiring years", admitted Riner before the Olympics.
And even the exceptional champion that he is could not overcome them to go for the gold.
© 2021 AFP