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| World indoor champion Teddy Tamgho at the European Athletics Paris 2011 LOC official press conference on Thursday. |
On the eve of the European Athletics Indoor Championships three French competitors attended the Official Press Conference at the Mairie of the 12th Arrondissement where the Bercy track is situated.
Outright favourite for the Triple Jump Teddy Tamgho was in relaxed mood talking about his long jump/triple jump double: “I am not going to attempt anything crazy at the triple jump. I am there to win it first and foremost,” he said. “I think it won’t be necessary to jump far to win the final.
“The key to winning is to disconnect the mind and just jump,” he added. “It’s a question of not looking for the perfect jump.”
The problem of peaking twice for winter and summer was posed, but Tamgho found “it is not a problem to peak twice. It happens a lot. It’s a normal situation in athletics to prepare for the indoor season and then outdoors.”
In any case, after the Championships “I shall detrain,” added Tamgho, introducing a new concept to athletics. “My body goes slower and it goes to sleep for a week. Then I start up again.”
Sitting alongside him, Myriam Soumaré was equally relaxed, professing she was “ready to compete and in form.”
In the 60m Soumaré is fourth fastest on paper, but only 0.06 behind leader Olesya Povkh of Ukraine. “I’m ready to beat my best time. Everybody starts from zero at these championships. I’m excited about competing in Bercy. My start is my strong point and that is important indoors. I also expect to be lifted by the crowd. Not since Barcelona have I felt as light as I did then and I think that feeling could return in Bercy. You need the atmosphere of a big championships to run above yourself.”
Sitting at the opposite end of the table to Soumaré, pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie was as excited as all the French athletes to be competing in front of a home crowd: “It’s my first international competition at home,” he said. “I just can’t wait to get going. All my family will be there as well as my friends. It makes me think of Turin. That was the beginning of my international career and I desperately want to retain the title.
“Everything I have done this winter has led to Bercy. After Barcelona we [his coach Damien Inocencio] talked about only one thing – Bercy. It is my one big priority.
“But first I have to get through the qualifying. In Doha [World Indoor Championships] I didn’t make it past the qualifying, despite the fact that I was second in the world on the rankings. Here it is about competing in France so it is more pressure.
“I spoke to Leslie Djhone about competing in Paris 2003 and he said that the crowd gives you wings. Here there will be 8000 people behind us in a small space.
Though it is the European Athletics Indoor Championships, Lavillenie felt that it would be like competing at a world level because of the vaults that have been achieved this season. The Frenchman heads the rankings with his 5.93 from Donetsk: “This winter the pole vault in Europe has been of a very high standard and of exceptional density. The competition here will be intense and comes chiefly from Germany’s Malte Mohr (5.86) who I expect to jump 5.80-plus and it would not surprise me if he went up to 5.90. The other athlete I have to take into account is Maksym Mazuryk of Ukraine (5.88).”
Apart from winning in Bercy, Lavillenie’s other major aim of the winter is to beat Jean Galfione’s French indoor record of 6m which has stood since 1999. Since the European Indoor Championships signals the end of the indoor season, the time for records is now and the place is Bercy. Over to you, Renaud.