There were them everywhere on the track, like in an Australian pursuit, in the final of the French Junior Team Pursuit Championship between Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Brittany, with riders one by one at certain moments . At the start, this Thursday evening, the Bretons gave back two seconds to their opponents after the playoff times. In the line opposite, the riders from Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes wanted to keep the torch alive, with a third consecutive title and a big thought for Léo Busson, stuck in hospital after his broken collarbone on Wednesday afternoon.
The Bretons were ambitious in front of their audience. “We wanted to give a little more than we could“, explains to DirectVelo Yann Le Normand, who led the ermine quartet. For his part, Nicolas Racodon, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes strategist, had to adapt his tactics to the loss of Léo Busson, “our best element. We were supposed to have four riders in the morning and make a change in the afternoon“.
“WHERE WE SHOULD HAVE PROHIBITED”
At the start of the final, the Bretons took the advantage and the riders from Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes quickly found themselves three. Sign of weakness? No. “It was planned. Jules Friot had to do the first five laps and then move away“. Brittany in the lead four to three, the public exults. The atmosphere of the cauldron of Loudéac can make you grow wings but sometimes also burn them. “The public pushed us even more. We got a little fired up, where we should have waited. Either we had great weather or it was going to be complicated“, admits the Bretons coach.
And the finale turns into an epic. The Rhône-Alpes train is the first to break up, two riders and a third unhooked. Brittany is holding up when… she also finds herself scattered, two plus one. “Quentin Kerouédan had just jumped, a torchbearer pressed hard and Théo lost a meter, then two, and at that speed…“, describes Yann Le Normand. There are runners everywhere and the priority is to regroup, unity is strength, especially when the time is taken from the third man. “We warned them, but we weren't afraid. With Camille Charret and Nathan Marcoux from the France pole, we had two big engines“, indicates Nicolas Racodon. The French Champion, in great shape, keeps his cool. “We didn't panic“, adds Camille Charret. On the Breton side, it is difficult to hear the calls to gather in the hellish noise of the velodrome. In the end, less than two laps from the finish, Camille Charret, still a little detached in front his two comrades, is the first to return to the rear wheel of poor Théo Paris who descends the track inconsolably.
THIRD CONSECUTIVE VICTORY
This final illustrates the difficulty and therefore the beauty of the team pursuit. When the train of the four riders turns into a TGV, the wire that connects the wagons shrinks. The faster they go, the more they transform into tightrope walkers above the void, ready to topple at the slightest grain of sand. It happened to the French team at the Olympic Games, it happened to all the big teams, precisely because they go fast. But in this final of the 2024 French Championship, the two teams took turns derailing, which is rarer. “I had never seen that“, remembers Nicolas Racodon.
Brittany, joined, failed to interrupt the victorious series of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. “The goal was to win the title for the third time in a rowagrees Nicolas Racodon. The MTT (Territorial Technical Manager, Julien Guiborel, Editor’s note) gives us resources, the President (Christelle Reille, Editor’s note) love the track“The track riders of the committee were able to go and prepare for their victory in Switzerland, in Geneva and Aigle, and in Bourges, “to find the configurations of a 200 meter track“Faced with them, the Bretons fell with honors.”It's a collective that learns and will be better, it's still sport, it's racing“, tempers Yann Le Normand.
