"If tomorrow everything stops, nothing will be missed," says Steven Da Costa

• Every Monday,

  20 Minutes

  gives the floor to a sports actor or actress who is making the news.

  This week, place for karateka Steven Da Costa.

• The Olympic champion is the figurehead of the French delegation for the European Championships which begin on Wednesday in Gaziantep, Turkey.

• France had brought back four bronze medals during the last edition and the Little Prince of karate is aiming, at 25, for a third continental title in the under 67 kg category.

A month after his victory in Matosinhos (Portugal) on the Karate 1 Premier League circuit, Steven Da Costa is preparing to put on the kimono in Turkey for the European Championships.

Tanned in Poreč (Croatia) last year, the child from Mont-Saint-Martin is determined to bring back a more flashy metal, despite a preparation slightly disturbed by a tear in the buttocks.

The goal: to enrich a prize list where two world titles, two European titles, and obviously an Olympic gold medal, brought back from Nippon Budōkan last summer, are already enthroned.

Between two training courses at the national training center of Castelnau-le-Lez, the Lorrain landed for an interview in a Parisian hotel.

After your world title in Dubai, you spent more than five months without competition.

You didn't find the time too long?

So many months without competition, I don't think that had ever happened to me.

I felt like I didn't know what to do anymore!

But it did me good.

Behind the world championships, I had to cut.

It was an overdose.

Too much competition, too much weight, too much work, a lot of media… Basically, I was supposed to go on vacation in January, that didn't even happen.

I just stopped for two weeks because I had eye and meniscus surgery.

I resumed training almost immediately.

Did you find pleasure right away?

Did you miss it?

Not too much.

I was no longer going to training in the same way.

I trained hard, but I got lazy more easily.

Once you have taken everything, you have less motivation, you seek your goals… But on the mat, you don't have much choice when you have someone in front of you who wants to beat you up

.

It was hard to get back into it, but I trained well and arrived ready for Portugal, that's the main thing.

For now, I still want to go for podiums and as long as it wins, I'll be there.

I'm always hungry to add a layer.

This competition in Matosinhos, last month, is the only one of your preparation for the Euro.

Did it meet all your expectations?

I needed a competition, it went very well, so everything is fine.

I was there to work and to have fun, more than for performance.

I felt good at every turn, even if the final was complicated (against the Jordanian Abdel Rahman Almasatfa).

It's a profile that annoys me a lot, but it was good, I was there to work.

What has changed since your Olympic title?

Not much in itself.

A little more notoriety, I am recognized a little more, but it is still reasonable.

It may have helped me to extend contracts that would have ended, or to open other doors, but my life hasn't changed, it hasn't changed much.

Psychologically, having checked this box, has it brought you more serenity?

It really relaxed me.

It was the goal of my life.

Maybe that's why I take things a little cooler.

The big goal, he was there.

But I still want to win.

🔥 August 5, 2021, a day engraved forever!

#OlympicChampion

🥋🥇🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/Bmw46YJ3KN

— Steven Da Costa (@Steven_DaCosta) December 26, 2021

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Have you considered changing your approach, your working method, with your physical glitches of the last few months?

No, it's always been the same.

Maybe it should, but I've always done that.

I need to get out, I'm like that.

I am not in the box of the stereotype of the top athlete.

All that is care or recovery, I don't do.

For me, recuperation is a siesta!

I don't necessarily go to bed early, maybe I pay a little for it.

Afterwards, it's not injuries that really stop me, it's little alarms, not very bad.

I've always had problems, I broke my thumb before the Games, so it's routine, nothing serious.

Last year, you said you were invited “everywhere, and sometimes for anything”.

What's the most absurd thing you've been offered?

The day I win, I receive an email invitation to a fair with a knitting trick.

It makes no sense

.

I try to do as many things as possible but I can't be everywhere, and it has to make sense to me too.

After the Games, I stopped answering the phone when I didn't know the number.

I couldn't manage anymore, it rang twenty or thirty times a day.

I got a message from a florist, some unrelated stuff…I was wondering where they got my number.

You don't do any knitting?

No, I still don't know how to sew a bib on a kim'!

We recently saw you in Saint-Marcel, in the Eure, with the young licensees of a club.

Do you feel that you have more responsibilities as an athlete since Tokyo?

Yes, I've had results for a while, but the Games have woken up a lot of people.

I stay detached, there is pressure on the shoulders but at the base, I do this for me.

I'm trying to take some weight off by telling myself that.

The key to winning?

It's to have fun 🙂#FightArtTeam pic.twitter.com/uVNO6xRITi

— Steven Da Costa (@Steven_DaCosta) April 13, 2022

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In Turkey, you have the opportunity to be Olympic, World and European champion at the same time.

Are you sensitive to this prospect?

If we start with this in mind, I have to win everything every year!

There are the World Games also in July.

I have another approach.

I always want to win, otherwise I wouldn't go.

I don't come as a tourist, but now that I've taken it all, it's not the same, it doesn't taste the same.

If tomorrow everything stops and I no longer earn anything, I'll be proud of everything I've accomplished, I won't miss anything.

Now, the goal is to make history a little more, perhaps to have the biggest French track record of all time, and really drive the point home.

We are more in the idea of ​​marking history than in the search for a trilogy.

We try to go for records.

But if tomorrow there is nothing left, I would be happy all the same.

What memory do you keep of your third place at the Euro in 2021?

Absolutely bad, what a question

.

Horrible, one of my worst competitions, even if there is a podium.

Anyway, when it doesn't win, for me, it's a shitty competition.

I wasn't necessarily happy, I don't care about third place.

It hurts at the time, it's boring, but we move on.

The good thing is that it revitalized me for the Games.

It seems that your Olympic medal has been lying around in your car for a long time...

It's true !

I've been asked for it so many times everywhere, I can't even count the number of times I've forgotten it... Often, Maxime (his press officer) sent me messages to tell me to think about it, and I I managed to forget it.

When we were received at the Elysée, I didn't have it!

They stole it from me on the train too.

What do you mean ?

I had my bag stolen shortly after the Games.

I found her, otherwise no one would have got off the train, believe me!

I went to see the controller and initially he didn't want to make a call, he didn't want to know anything.

I almost got confused with him at that time.

Luckily, other controllers were there, a call was made, and I was rummaging around so much that whoever took her must have noticed.

I found it further on, placed between two pieces of luggage.

I have never been attached to medals.

That of the Games is terrible, magnificent, but victory is in my heart above all.

If it was pure gold, she would have already left

.

Believe me it would be sold, I would have made a mock replica for the photos, and voila!

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