“We believe very strongly” for Wednesday, reacted Tuesday on Franceinfo the national technical director of the French Federation of triathlon Benjamin Maze, also explaining that the athletes had felt “a little anger and disappointment” at the announcement of the postponement of the event to the Olympic Games.
Asked about the fact that the men’s and women’s events will be held on Wednesday, the head of the federation did not hesitate: “Yes, we believe in it very strongly.” He recalled that “the equivalent of two weeks of rain” had fallen on Friday and Saturday, which is why the Seine is still polluted and the event postponed by one day.
“A little bit of anger and a lot of disappointment”
“The athletes were up a little before 4am, they were already at breakfast when we got the information from the International Federation. There is inevitably a little anger and a lot of disappointment,” he conceded.
“They went back to try to go to bed so that they could wake up a little later and go to the swimming training planned in the pool around 10:30 a.m.,” he explained. The training in the Seine planned for Sunday and Monday had also had to be cancelled. The French had not planned to go there because they had already tested the Seine last year.
He explained that the athletes had prepared for this uncertainty: “we worked a lot with psychologists, mental trainers on this dimension.” “We focus on what we have control over, mastery, on what we can impact,” he said.
“We have control over our preparation, over our state, precisely, nervous, to avoid wasting energy, to avoid losing nervous influx on these elements and rather to be on elements of confidence, elements that we control and to be focused on our sporting preparation”, he added.
The triathlon is the first Olympic discipline to be held in the river, before open water swimming in the second week of the JO from Paris.
With AFP.
