essential
Qualified for his second consecutive Olympic final, the Villeneuve-sur-Lot native will take to the track at the Stade de France this Saturday, August 10 (7.05pm) with the ambition of winning a medal.

The hopes of French athletics rest almost solely on the broad shoulders of Gabriel Tual. Lot-et-Garonnais will not be France's only representative in the finals, as the torchbearers have all done the job, qualifying all four teams in the final round for the first time in history.

But after the failure of the sprinters this Friday, August 9, and before the men's (9 p.m.) and women's (9.14 p.m.) 4×400, as well as Agathe Guillemot's 1,500 m (8:15 p.m.) take to the track, the middle distance embodies, alongside Cyréna Samba-Mayela (100m hurdles, 19:35), the strongest hope of the French delegation, which is still longing for the first medal in the emblematic discipline. of the Olympic Games.

Since his first Olympic final (7th in Tokyo in 2021), Gabriel Tual has come a long way. Arriving on the scene a little later than Toulouse Benjamin Robert (eliminated in the series) who is the same age as him, Tual is now a big name.

“Benjamin had found this a little before Gabriel, but today we see that Gabi is running for him. He has this thing where psychologically, he is the one who dominates his opponents”, explains Pierre-Ambroise Bosse, the only Frenchman to succeed. won the world title over 800 meters in 2017. Fresh off the slopes also saw his younger brother, who celebrated his 26th birthday in April, dislodge his then-standing French record since 2014.

And not anyway, since last July 7 at Charléty, Tual lowered it from 1'42''53 to 1'41''61. A week later, in Monaco, he achieved another performance that would have allowed him to break the record, with 1'42''10. Lot-et-Garonnais is in the form of his life and has arrived in Paris with a new status, which he has so far been perfectly capable of supporting.

Djamel Sedjati to watch

Having qualified unflinchingly for the semi-finals, arriving late yesterday morning in a Stade de France well warmed by the blue runners who had just qualified for the 4×400 final left in the second half of world champion Marco Arop, Tual did not panic , making his effort in the last corner, also on the outside, crossing the line in 1'45''16 behind the Canadian (1'45''05).

“I'm a bit worried at the start of 200, but I don't want to burn juice to overtake in the corner, I know that in any case, Marco will go there. I am patient and waiting my turn. “I do the final in a fluid manner” debriefs the European champion, who specifies “because I kept a little energy in the final flat, but not too much”.

Here he is now in the final, where anything can happen, where an outsider can turn the tables and hang on for eternity for a hundred or a slightly better placed step. Among the competitors we will note the Algerian Djamel Sedjati, winner of the meetings in Paris and Monaco in July and who still looked quite easy in the first semi-final.

But the 800 meters are often happy to crush predictions, and Gabriel Tual knows that in the final, “all the cards are reshuffled. I'll just have to play mine at the right time”.

He swears he won't plan for this race, the race of his life, but still sees a final without a burst of speed, around 1'43 / 1'44: “I don't think the world record will drop tonight. “

“The hardest part is over”

With Tokyo on his feet and head, he knows what to expect even now, even if running in an empty stadium or in front of 70,000 people behind him is definitely not the same experience. In any case, he defuses: “If I get a medal at the end, that's great, but otherwise, I won't have any regrets, I'll have tried everything.”

Smiling, he also says that “the hardest part is over. Half, like the series, is ultra-stressful. We are a bit in the unknown, we don't know who will go forward, who will come out, if” It will go quickly or not… We are preparing for something we don't know, with nothing to gain and a lot to lose”.

Gabriel Tual now has a lot to gain.

Source link