From our special correspondent in Yanqing,
It was too much.
By presenting himself in the mixed zone, at the foot of the Yanqing slalom track on Thursday, Alexis Pinturault could not hold back his tears.
For a long minute and a half, the French skier stood there in front of us, his head in his hands, before the press officer for the French ski team took him by the shoulders to give him a few words of comfort. .
“Come on Alex, it's okay, you did the right thing.
It's the state of mind that counts today, remember that.
It was on the descent that it was complicated.
There, you did the right thing.
That's what you have to keep,” murmurs Laurent Chrétien to him.
The words are simple but effective.
He even just summarized for us the scenario of the handset of the day.
By presenting himself this morning for the descent, and despite a season made of galleys so far, Alexis Pinturault was still the favorite.
But hopes were quickly dashed – or mortgaged, depending on whether you were more of a glass half empty or glass half full team – after a mistake halfway through.
A downhill fault that costs him dearly
“I sit down hard and I lose the line a lot, he described at 11:20 a.m. local time, just after the descent.
I have to score below and, above all, I don't bring speed.
When you sit like that, behind it is difficult to generate speed.
Despite this, the Courchevel skier can't imagine eating such a big gap (1''92 from the leader Kilde) in his teeth when crossing the line.
"I'm a little shaken," he told us, looking at his score on the screen.
I knew it wasn't ideal to make a mistake there, but I didn't think it would be this bad.
I was hoping to still be high enough on the wall to be able to generate speed before the flat.
Unfortunately, that was in my dreams… The reality is that it costs me dearly.
»
To the point of having no other choice than to send the sauce during the slalom scheduled three hours later, as Laurent Chrétien said.
And risk the mess.
That's what happened after just a few gates, and about thirty seconds on the track.
“I had a knife to my throat and not 50 options in front of me,” he said once the tears had dried.
I attack and behind I get a little stuck in a double (door) which was relatively tight.
Suddenly I have to swing my feet a little and I have a fairly strong reaction from the ski which sends me forward.
That's what makes me land on my elbow.
»
Ah yes, there is that too.
Not content to have said goodbye to his dream of Olympic gold in his favorite discipline – Quadruple winner of the globe in 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2020, ten successes in the World Cup, silver medalist at the 2018 Games or at the last Worlds, sorry – Alexis Pinturault also injured his right shoulder.
A season in Hell "
He talks about "shoulder subluxation" but, in truth, we don't know anything about it at the moment.
The medical staff of the France team did not wish to comment before giving him exams, as soon as he returned to the Olympic village.
“It's hard snow so, even if it's strong, we have to see”, simply told us David Chastan, the director of the French alpine ski teams.
“There I am still hot, engages Pintu.
That's why it's very hard to tell if it's going the right way or the wrong way.
But I'm still rather optimistic about the possibility of being at the start of the next two races (the giant slalom, Sunday, and the slalom, Wednesday).
But from there to being 100%, it's impossible to say now.
»
You know us, we're not pessimistic by nature, but here all the same... After a fantastic last season, which will have seen him pocket the big crystal globe rewarding the winner of the general classification of the World Cup, the native of Moutiers is living through the last nightmarish months.
In a sad 9th place in the World Cup standings, he can't get his head out of the snow cannon.
After his 7th place in the Kitzbühel slalom at the end of January, Pinturault bluntly said he had “the feeling that this season is hell”.
And when he arrived in Beijing a few days ago, for what looks very much like the last Games of his career, he told us that he could hardly do worse.
For the moment, unfortunately, things are going well.
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Alexis Pinturault
Winter Olympics 2022
Alpine skiing
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