“From now on, we will have a target on our back” – Libération

They shone on the Parisian tatami mats during the Paris Olympic Games, individual medalists and team crowns after a suffocating final. “Libération” brought together Joan-Benjamin Gaba and Maxime-Gaël Ngayap Hambou, 23, for an interview before the latter’s return to competition this weekend.

“You are not in my predictions but it is up to you to enter my statistics.” It is mid-July in Le Touquet, D-7 of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. In a rhyme, Stéphane Frémont, one of the mentors of Joan-Benjamin Gaba and Maxime-Gaël Ngayap Hambou, drills the skull one last time Brett Sinclair and Danny Wilde from the French judo team. The “special forces” – named after the WhatsApp loop launched during confinement with his partner Richard Melillo to keep “JB”, “MG” and the dozen of millenials of which the duo is in charge – have more than done their part in terms of daily dose of mantras, exercises and collective emulation which make the brain legionnaire. Pressed to explain his point from the height of his quarter of a century of responsibilities in the French team, Frémont complies. “At each Olympic Games, a majority of medalists are expected judokas and there are three or four surprises.” The two natives of 2001 hit five out of five: “Okay. In your three or four surprises this year, you will have two French people: us.”

When his time came, Gaba, 35th in the -73 kg world ranking, stunned the Arena Champ-de-Mars twice. Individually on Monday, the judoka from Chilly-Mazarin