From our special correspondent in Zhangjiakou,
What-ah, we would have been lied to ???
Arriving in Zhangjiakou station, almost two weeks ago, we were sold (and YOU were sold) a winter without snow, with barely 2 to 3 cm per month.
Now, this morning, when we opened the curtains of the hotel room, what was our surprise when we saw the great white coat that covered the surrounding mountains.
After sticking our finger in it, we were clear: less than half an hour from the start of the team snowboardcross event, it was easy to fall 4 to 5 cm and the visibility was very average.
From there, we knew that the conditions were going to play a central role in the runs of the day and, therefore, that the preparation of the boards would be essential to hope for anything.
It did not fail.
But in this little game, it is clear that the technicians of the France team missed their subject this Saturday.
What did we need?
Come on, ten seconds, the time to see our riders literally glued to the track, as if they were carrying Bing Dwen Dwen (the Games mascot) with them, to understand that the great hopes we had placed in them to go up the France in the medal standings were already dead and snowy.
France loses the waxing battle
Note that their competitors weren't sliding at the speed of Buzz Lightyear either but, in the game of comparison, there's still no comparison.
"I made a good start but as soon as I flattened the board, they passed me like cannonballs", confirmed Bozzolo after a nightmarish race where he finished last.
As a sports lover, we regret the lack of spectacle for this event which was taking its first steps at the Games.
In love with the Blues, we regret that there was never a match.
“We are frustrated because what we like are technical boarders, who slide, where there is a challenge, breathed Chloé Trespeuch in the wake of elimination in the quarter-finals.
There it was just a giant sliding test, we lost because we didn't have the best products under the boards.
We clearly didn't enjoy it.
»
At least, this event will have allowed us to realize that, as much as in cross-country skiing or in biathlon, the waxing work of the technicians is essential to perform.
Merlin Surget: “We don't talk about it often in snowboarding but it's also very, very important.
You can't even imagine how it bumps into the shadows.
"If they had to admit that the "techos" had missed out today, none of the four riders entered on Saturday (Bozzolo-Pereira de Sousa on one side, Surget-Trespeuch on the other) wanted sink them more than that.
On the contrary, they never ceased to recall how these little hands in the shadows were doing a “wow job”, to use the words of Perieira de Sousa, the individual medalist snowborder in Pyeongchang.
The Blues would have liked to postpone the event
“We do not incriminate our technicians, they work more than us, they are more invested than us (sic).
They're crazy, they wake up in the middle of the night to try things, they're chemists.
They have a very hard job.
Today they weren't there but we don't blame them,” explains Bozzolo in the mixed zone, a few meters from the finish line.
“It is very important to specify it, insists Chloé Trespeuch, we love them!
".
They tried to find a solution between the morning training session, where almost no French managed to finish their run because they lacked speed, and the start of the race.
In vain.
"It was less bad," Trespeuch smiled, but not enough to hope for anything.
Seeing the fiasco coming as big as a house, the Blues asked their coach to push for a postponement of the race to the next day, but the organizers (and the other teams) decided otherwise.
“It would have been fairer to postpone, loose Bozzolo, jaded as ever.
There, it will be medals given to technicians more than to athletes.
Afterwards, you need better ones than others, today it's not us, we hope it will be for next time.
See you in four years, in Milan-Cortina.
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