Europe 1 with AFP 8:03 p.m., March 01, 2023

The European Indoor Athletics Championships, contested from Thursday to Sunday in Istanbul, present "a last opportunity" for young French athletes to toughen up in a more accessible international competition before the Paris Olympics in 2024.

A few days before the start of the European Indoor Athletics Championships in Istanbul, the French team is traveling to a battered country.

The competition was maintained despite the earthquake which struck eastern Turkey and Syria on February 6, causing more than 50,000 deaths (including more than 44,000 in Turkey) according to the latest reports.

European Athletics announced that there would be "no local advertising for the event and that celebrations and extra-sporting entertainment would be kept to a minimum".

Launched as best they could towards the Olympic Games at home in 2024, the French team is showing up in numbers in Istanbul with 39 athletes, almost all of them "selectable", keeping the leaders' promise to open the floodgates so that hopefuls experience the major championships before the huge Olympic stage.

>> READ ALSO

- Athletics: Mayer and Samba-Mayela will take the French to the European Championships in Istanbul

"Most accessible championship"

The Blues, led by their totem Kevin Mayer on the heptathlon, have a good opportunity to win medals, against opposition of varying levels.

After that it will be harder.

"This championship is extremely important. It is the most accessible, the 'weakest' major championship", judges one of the two oldest members of the team, the triple jumper Benjamin Compaoré (35), also coach of the young Enzo Hodebar (23), present in the selection.

Then will come the Worlds in Budapest this summer, the Indoor Worlds in Glasgow in a year and then the Euro in Rome in early summer 2024, too close to the Olympics to be representative.

"Someone who would reveal himself in Istanbul, by taking a medal, he can gain confidence. It's the last opportunity to have something accessible. It's the reality of the world level, which is very hard Istanbul remains an international championship, and there is nothing more true in athletics. This is where you have to learn to control your emotions and your performance."

Despite Sasha Zhoya's package, the tricolors present a big collective on the 60m hurdles, with in particular the indoor world champion Cyréna Samba-Mayela, the man in form Just Kwaou-Mathey, the multi-medalist Pascal Martinot-Lagarde and the ghost Dimitri Bascou.

READ ALSO - Athletics: Mahiedine Mekhissi, triple Olympic medalist, retires at 37

Missing Duplantis

The Euro will be deprived by choice of Swedish pole vault star Armand "Mondo" Duplantis, who has just brought the world record in the discipline to 6.22 m on Saturday in Clermont-Ferrand.

Enough to shed more light on the Dutch sensation Femke Bol, who seized the old world record for the 400m indoors (49.26 on February 19 against 49.59 for the Czech Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1982).

Bol (22), already an Olympic and world medalist in the 400m hurdles, continues to explore her possibilities after achieving the hat-trick at the Munich Euro in August 2022 (400m, 400m hurdles, 4x400m relay).

The Italian Marcell Jacobs, Olympic champion in the 100m and world champion in the 60m indoors last winter, owes him revenge after being beaten during the Italian Championships.

The Norwegian glutton Jakob Ingebrigtsen, already seven times European champion on the track at only 22 years old, should defend his titles in the 1,500 and 3,000 m.