Twelve titles of world champion, 34 times European champion, holder of 26 world records… Patrice Martin's record in water skiing makes you dizzy.
Twenty years after the end of his sporting career, the 57-year-old from Nantes looks back on those years which forged the man he is today.
You quit your career in 2001, at the age of 37, after 25 years of water skiing.
We often speak of retirement as the “little death” of the athlete.
How did you experience this pivotal moment?
After ten years of career, I would have imagined quitting and building my family life.
I often said, around 30, that I wanted to go as far as possible, without doing the year too long.
But often, we realize that it is the year too many when we made it.
This is why this choice of end of career is difficult to make.
What sparked this idea in me was that I had a few years with injuries starting in 1998. In 2000, I told myself that I couldn't stop with an injury.
I then prepared my exit.
At the start of the 2001 season, I knew I was going to quit, with the goal of retaking the world record.
No one expected it.
This small death of the athlete, I limited it because I prepared it.
What were your projects then?
In the months that follow, life is not at all the same.
There were plenty of them, but we did not succeed in everything.
All my experience has enabled me to be president of the French Federation of Water Skiing and Wakeboarding (FFSNW), administrator of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF), member of the National Sports Agency… Yet, I was convinced that I would never get involved in the federation.
In 2008, when you stopped competing, you seriously injured your arm during a gathering of former champions.
Tell us about this moment.
It was seven years after my career and they still almost cut my arm off.
When three months later, you start to recover and you don't move… I was depressed.
There, you say to yourself, you have to have the desire.
I have a chance, it is that I am left-handed.
You should see the glass half full.
Do you think that it is still possible for an athlete to complete a course like yours?
Today, Martin Fourcade has 13 world championship titles.
It is a beautiful longevity.
Let's go back to the beginning of your career when you were nicknamed The Little Prince.
What was this Little Prince in mind 40 years ago?
Very little, he wanted to be a baker.
When he was around 12, he wanted to be an airline pilot.
I loved the idea of being able to take people to the other side of the world.
At school, I was a bit rowdy, always full of energy.
I didn't necessarily listen to everything but I recorded a lot of things.
I had this taste for fairly specific things and maybe that's why I got along very well with my math teacher, with whom I kept in touch today.
Your father has followed you throughout your athletic career.
Are you aware that you were a special case?
Even today, I think I am the only example of a top athlete who started his career with his father and ended with him.
There have been ups and downs, of course.
Does that still seem possible to you today?
But anything is possible!
Today, there are young people who are starting to be good, and the family locks them up, very often to protect them.
But I don't think anyone other than my dad could have given me the ingredients to make me do so well.
Now there are drifts, there have been and always will be.
At one point, it's hard to say, but I won a coach and maybe I lost part of the father.
Because sometimes a coach has to be tough, and that's not necessarily what you expect from a father with his child.
Other coaches may make promises to you, but for a while they let you down.
Your family never lets you down.
You often mention your meeting with Pope John Paul II.
Why is this extra-sporting memory so important in your career?
Because if I hadn't done sports, I would never have experienced this. You are 15 years old and you meet the Pope. We are in 1979, there is still the Eastern bloc, the Pope comes from Poland, he was elected a year ago… He represented an opening to the world. The first time I see him is before a competition in Italy. We are 300 people, they push me in front and I shake his hand! Someone asks me: "But why didn't you kiss the papal ring? But I didn't know I was a kid! The Pope, I didn't even know what to call him!
(laughs)
. The next day, as his car passes, he decides to stop to say hello to me while I was jogging. I was amazed when he started talking to me in French.
Sport has allowed you to experience some crazy things.
You also made the front page of a video game in 1987 "The gods of the sea"
...
It's a bit as if I had made the Fifa jacket!
But at the time, there was no social media.
I even made a record!
I also helped draw a boat, which didn't work.
I also helped to imagine the first simulators with pulsed water.
But it is true that the video game at the time, it was the very beginnings.
It was sold quite a bit, it was on Astrad, Thomson and Attari.
Did you play it?
Ah yes, but I was bad!
(laughs)
.
I think I still have a few copies, but I no longer have the console.
From now on, you also work for the company Synergie, as public relations manager.
Are you a man in a hurry?
I always used to travel, to always be on the move.
I thought that at the end of my sports career I would be cooler.
And then, the natural returns at a gallop.
Now, my sport is to run between two meetings!
(laughs)
But I already had that multitasking side when I was young.
My father made me do a lot of sports.
Which ?
I played football until junior at FC Nantes, alpine skiing, judo, basketball and a little boxing.
My father made me do all of this by telling himself that these are complementary sports.
Coco Suaudeau trained me when I was in minimal, and Raynald Denoueix the year before.
Basketball brought me relaxation, boxing was for resistance.
And judo was about learning to fall.
My father had this big picture.
At one point, the champion is the one who has that little extra something.
And that, you bring it from outside disciplines.
Do you still water ski today?
Very little.
Because there is a big personal frustration when I ski, because I am downright lousy compared to what I was doing, and that annoys me.
And the next day, it reminds me that I'm not the same old anymore, it hurts all over!
At 44, the "Little Prince" has a new future for himself
High-Tech
Montpellier: This small electric boat equipped with foils gives the sensation of flying on water
Interview
Sport
Nantes
FC Nantes
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