How athletes and journalists avoid each other with the health crisis

Hugo Lloris, in September 2020 at the end of a press conference.

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• If high-level sport has resumed since this summer, its coverage is accompanied by new compromises due to the health protocol.

• While many players are willing to do it, interaction with athletes is often more limited than before.

• The advent of "videoconferencing" tends to sanitize exchanges because of the distance. 

Fortunately, we will always have Marcoussis, its lands at the end of the world and its impossible schedules.

The French National Rugby Center, where a principality in the state.

There, no containment that holds.

Before Ireland and before Fiji, we could still attend the high intensity training in the neck of Raphaël Ibanez, in all honor.

The manager of the Blues even took apart the small group of journalists to detail, touch screen support, what was going to consist of the session of the day before the start of the fluff.

This avoids nostalgia for great adventures deep in the Yvelines.

Since the international re-entry in September, in fact, the media no longer have the right to come and breathe the fresh air in Clairefontaine to have the football Blues there because of the health context.

Certainly, Didier Deschamps gives of his person by coming to type the chat by interposed screen almost every day, but on match nights, it's light.

The coach, because that's the rule, and a player, often the same one who spoke to the broadcaster just before.

"Will Covid-19 be for sports journalism what September 11 was for air transport?"

Are changing rooms and mixed areas going to become the new cockpits, locked from the inside in all circumstances? ”Https://t.co/ofJxyW4SAE by @LaurentFavre

- Laurent Favre (@LaurentFavre) October 18, 2020

And too bad if we get indigestion from Giroud, sent to fight before and after Ukraine last month, for example.

Note that we are talking to you about the evenings when everything is going well, since there is often a problem along the way.

A story of waiting bus or plane on the tarmac, and it is the player who passes us under our nose.

"Sorry guys, there is a match in three days," apologizes the press officer who knows the music, since he was a journalist not long ago.

His predecessor, Philippe Tournon, was one of those who had free access to the locker rooms, where we decided on the marks in the right way.

The next generation has been demoted from the locker room to the parking lot, and ours, who has not even known the parking lot, is in the process of going from the press conference to the video.

If the distance between athletes and journalists begins to rise, with the Covid-19, it is only increasing.

Without screaming scandal, we tend to think that footballers see it as a blessing, they who still had to imagine ridiculous ploys to snub us in mixed zone, the trick of the phone to the ear being a little hackneyed, frankly.

The disappearance of mixed areas marks the end of confidences

Those who played the game (and it was more the case of the Blues) are now more difficult to catch.

In Nantes, a club more open than you might think, the sports management makes the effort to propose two players after the match, but the opponent does not have the same obligation.

In Strasbourg, where Marc Keller defends a "popular" policy including with the RCSA followers, it is still possible to have individual interviews quite easily by telephone, but the players no longer need to pass in front of the bungalow reserved for journalists to leave the Meinau locker room.

This causes some hiccups that are difficult to understand.

Thus, last Saturday in Toulouse, despite the requests of the few journalists present, Valenciennes did not send his right-back and captain Joffrey Cuffaut, who had yet scored four goals in a mind-boggling match (4-5).

A conversation which, we dare say, would have interested VA supporters, at least.

More generally, the disappearance of mixed areas marks the end of the little off-the-cuff confidences collected on the sly, those that will make you hell two or three days later, time to dig a little.

Everyone comes up with the same statements, and the reader must find it repetitive, a few times.

Some rare exceptions

In some cases, this only confirms a pre-existing situation.

It happened already before the Covid that we hang for nothing at the Parc des Princes on the evenings of a large victory, where we send the Lille resident who speaks the least French in the bowels of the Pierre Mauroy Stadium to be sure that no one is eternizes.

The good surprises continue to exist despite everything.

OL, which remains a relatively transparent club given the category in which it fights, did not hesitate to deliver Memphis Depay to the stake at the very end of the transfer window, while the latter dreamed only of joining Barça.

In front of the Dutchman, everyone tried as best they could to respect social distancing so as not to spoil this increasingly exceptional face-to-face.

Because even more than the drying up of moments of direct exchanges with “sources”, it is indeed the advent of “videoconferences” that has changed everything.

Take Roland-Garros, one of the rare sporting events where the media exercise still means something.

A conference with Nadal or Djoko can last a good half an hour, and the professional intimacy of these great champions with certain followers often offers nice nuggets.

But in an empty and cold room like an operating theater, athletes, forced to watch a television screen in front of them, find it much more difficult to engage.

For Pauline Parmentier, who was playing her last tournament, it was heartbreaking not to be able to share her last media appearance, late at night: “Why are you not here?

I want to be with you ”.

And a colleague who replied, pained: "We can't, but we are with you".

The advent of "video" exchanges

The discomfort was even palpable, sometimes, with the tricolor revelations of the fortnight.

Hugo Gaston or Clara Burel are teenagers, normally not yet bored of answering interviews, and yet, each of their appearance has led to a disappointment.

We didn't get to know them any better at the end, when it wouldn't have been difficult to snatch some more of themselves from fifteen or twenty in a hall, with encouraging smiles to put them at ease. .

It's easier, of course, with Didier Deschamps or Corinne Deacon, who know the business.

The coach, cloistered at home because of a positive test, did not need to see us face to face in October to gently torpedo the moods of the Lyonnaises.

Let us underline here the general good will and even a form of mutual benevolence as for the survival of the various trades.

If the Tour de France was able to be held at the cost of a very restrictive health protocol for the public and the media, usually well served by the most conciliatory press officers in the profession, we ended up finding short paths. unpleasant, with phone calls open to runners 1 to 2 hours after the races.

This did not prevent the regulars of improvised press points in front of the Campaniles de province from complaining about missing out on the fervor of the race, but in hindsight, it was almost Indian summer.

Roland-Garros shunned by the media

Because the resurgence of the epidemic in the fall ended up showering the enthusiasm of sports writing.

At Roland Garros, less than 400 journalists out of the 1,200 accredited members made the trip, and the tournament did not appear to be worse off, the FFT welcoming the audiences on television and on social networks.

We have also sometimes wondered what we added by being "on site" as John K. from his sunny Florida terrace, as we have sometimes wondered what we were doing in Lisbon for the Final 8 last summer.

Fifteen days on site despite the difficult end of the month, and only one validated “match” accreditation, OL against City.

Only around thirty print journalists were able to attend the final between PSG and Bayern, which is always more, you will tell me, than the first six on the roped party authorized to narrate the last clasico at Camp Nou.

“Don't let go”, thank you Guillaume Martin

However, make no mistake about it, it is not a question of defending a corporatist vision of the profession or of regretting the past comfort by wallowing in navel-gazing.

We will quote here the intervention of a certain Shinsuke Kobayashi, a Japanese colleague, during the last (virtual) assembly of the international association of the sports press in July.

“Athletes can now speak to their fans directly on social media, and clubs can sell exclusive interviews through their own broadcast channels, but it is the journalistic analysis that adds depth to the coverage and the narration of sports news.

It is the journalists who can tell what is going on behind the scenes.

Do not let the clubs and the institutions put us aside in the post-covid world ”.

Without falling into the bombastic or making the coup of the fourth estate, journalists are still in the best position, in fact, to know how to tell a story, to offer an in-depth reading of an athlete, a match, or a federal election. .

Fortunately, this expertise is still sought after by many readers, listeners, and viewers.

Some athletes are aware of this, like Guillaume Martin, who invited us during the Tour de France to keep our “vigilance”.

“We are most often on rails, we answer the same questions dozens of times after a race.

I don't want cycling to become Formula 1 or football, that we have to say all the time sanitized to which riders and journalists put up with.

It would be sad to come to that.

I am afraid that some teams will take advantage of the situation to extend the rules put in place because of the Covid.

Above all, don't let go ”.

We don't give up, but we despair, despite everything.

The last time ?

The expeditious post-match of the XV of France against Ireland at the Stade de France.

Only Cyril Baille and Arthur Vincent introduced themselves (at the same time) and only answered a handful of questions.

Not really memorable, for the most successful end of Tournament conf since the release.

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