NARRATIVE – The French sprinter finished the Games without a medal. She hopes to find the strength to bounce back.
The stubborn bitterness sticks to a daily life which has not yet found the colors of envy. Time will eventually make the memories less painful. In the meantime, Mathilde Gros is still only a shadow of herself. World speed champion in 2022 (on the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines track), the sprinter was among the headliners of the French Olympic team. Scheduled for gold… Before the headwinds. The infernal sequence. The violence of ricochet disappointments. Dejection. The astonishment.
Defeated in the keirin semi-finals, then in the round of 16 and in the speed repechage during the Paris 2024 Olympics, the native of Pas-de-Calais left the Games without a medal. She who wanted to erase from her memory the traumatic memory of the failed Tokyo Olympics in 2021… « In Tokyo, I had high hopes, but I didn't have that much in place. I hadn't prepared as much. I had never experienced such a big failure. And it's true…
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