The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are approaching, and with them, the preparation of Olympic athletes is intensifying month by month, to be ready to collect as many medals as possible from July 26 to August 11, 2024. We've chosen to meet a dozen French athletes, who have already qualified or will be trying to qualify during the final months before the competition, to help you discover their passion and their world! This is your chance to find out more about some of the lesser-known disciplines or those recently added to the Olympic program, and to support the athletes who have touched your heart!
For the fourth interview in this series, we set out to meet Pauline Ranvier, who spoke to Sortir à Paris about her sport, fencing, and her hopes and expectations for the Paris 2024 Games. A member of the French foil team, she is, among other things, Olympic vice-champion in Tokyo in the team event, and began fencing at around the age of 10 in the capital.
Paris 2024 Olympics: history, records, rules, athletes... All you need to know about fencing
It's an ancient sport in which France excels: discover the history and workings of fencing, before following the events at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. [Read more]
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It's a combat sport, with three weapons: foil, epee and sabre. They are different, as is the surface area: with foil, for example, you can hit the trunk without arms or legs, whereas with sabre, you can hit above the belt, because at the time, you weren't supposed to kill the horse. With epee, on the other hand, it's the whole body. With foil and epee, you hit with the point of the blade, whereas with sabre, you hit with the cutting edge.
Lastly, and more complex in terms of refereeing, with epee, the first to hit is right, and if both hit, both get the point, whereas with foil and sabre, it's a conventional weapon, so there's a question of priority.
It's the basic weapon you learn at school. I started in CE1-CE2 and it was foil that was offered. After that, I joined a club that also practised foil, so naturally I gravitated towards that. Often, it's the club that gives you the lead on the weapon you're going to choose, and then you can change if you want.
In fencing, we do preliminary phases, which are pool phases where we do assaults, matches, in 5 touches or 3 minutes. At the end of these, there's a table of knockout matches, in 15 touches or 3x3 minutes, with a one-minute break. So if at the end of 9 minutes, we haven't reached 15, whoever's in front wins. If the score is tied, we go to sudden death with priority, and the shooter has one minute to put a hit on the other.
It's a bit complex, because we started at the end of April 2023. First of all, we have to qualify the team that will be able to take part in the Games, and once it's qualified, the shooters will be selected. So our team is well on the way, since we've already started the qualification process with a European and world vice-championship title, so we're well on the way. And then, our individual selection starts in December (2023) until the end of March, when we'll have selective World Cup events.
Between the World Cups, the World Championships every year and the Olympic Games, by now I'm used to it. I'm 29, so I'm beginning to know how things work, and I know that there are a lot of stages before the Paris Games, including officially qualifying the team, and not waiting for performance, doing what we do every day and trying to achieve the most consistent performances possible.
Obviously, collective preparation is very important for us, because first we qualify the team and then the individual quota. We train together, we vibrate together, and our team medals are very important!
They're going to take place at the Grand Palais, and it's going to be incredible. Personally, in 2010, the World Fencing Championships were held there. I was very young and I was lucky enough to be able to attend that event, so to imagine shooting under that glass roof is just crazy!
It's plural, because fencing has developed a lot these days. So, clearly, the best foil fencers are the Italians, the Americans, and we also have Japan, which is in the top 4, and Canada... After that, we're part of the world elite too, so it's going to be a real battle!
Not much, in the sense that it's still the Olympic Games. However, the closer we get to the event, the more I think we'll feel something different, because it's still new. There's going to be more media coverage, everything's going to be bigger, even life in Paris is going to be different, so we're going to have to armour ourselves, keep in shape and not get too close to all this emulation!
Well, the real difference is the notion of contact. You don't have bare-handed contact with your opponent, you have a certain distance because you're carrying a weapon. What's more, we're masked, so we don't have that piercing stare that takes us away from real close combat.
It started without me knowing it when I was 4, when my parents took me to see"The Mask of Zorro" at the cinema, which was a bit violent for a little girl, but it made me fall in love with the sport. I started to become a fan of Zorro and it was through him that I wanted to start fencing. At school, I had the opportunity to try out a sport and I thought, why not, and one thing led to another and here I am!
It's shaped me as a person and as an athlete. When you're very young, you have to deal with failures and successes, you have to travel. I left my parents when I was 16 and went to Aix-en-Provence for three years. So, for me, it's a kind oflife elixir, I feel like I've had a bit of an accelerated life for ten years, of everything you can feel when you're young. It's given me self-confidence, rigour, joy, extraordinary moments and encounters, so I've really got a lot going for me!
When I was little, I was lucky enough to go to the IPC, which is a men's foil tournament that is now mixed, and I saw Brice Guyart, Olympic champion in 2000 and 2004, and it was he who inspired me at the time. But today, it's also figures like Martin Fourcade and Novak Djokovic, great figures in the world of sport, who inspire me with their consistency, tenacity and the passion that drives them to perform every day.
I started fencing at a very small club called Paris Suffren (15th arrondissement). And for the record, it's a club that's located in the Emile Anthoine stadium (7th arrondissement), just below the Eiffel Tower. I felt so privileged when I was warming up to have it above me, it was incredible. It was my club for quite a few years, and I had to leave it to enter the top level with Melun Val de Seine. Which is also a great family and my fencing master, who passed away a few years ago, really taught me everything, so it's really my club of choice.
Fencing is a sport we all dream about. How about learning to handle the sword, sabre or foil? Here are the clubs in the Paris region where you can learn and practice fencing. [Read more]
I think all young people have tried playing with a stick or a sword to hit their friends at school, so when you put on a mask and have a weapon in your hands, it's even more fun to try the sport! It gives us a lot of confidence and sports values, so instead of trying to play in the playground, try it for real - it's much more fun (in a club, of course!).
I'm not sure that we've achieved what we needed to in terms of fencing, because today's films about fencing are still "medieval " in style, and we're still a long way from actually practising the sport. So it's great because it's shown from different angles, but it's still fencing to kill, basically, but we're forgetting the game and sport side that we practice. It's great that there are plenty of films out there, but it would be good to exaggerate this sporting side in films that are a little more modern and not from the time of the musketeers.
It's true that I've always wanted to do a women's version, given that today fencing is represented through masculine images. But no, it's not difficult as a woman, but in the overall image, fencing is still dedicated to men, because they're the ones who kill. Fortunately, in our sport, it's very mixed, but for the average person, it's still quite masculine in the overall idea.
I think hard work pays off and I believe in my dreams, so I tell myself that with hard work, passion and desire, you can go very far!
What I'd like to say to Parisians is that, like all Parisians, and I'm the first, we like to grumble, and it's true that the Paris Games are going to be complicated in a certain sense, but we have to think about the positive side of things and the emotions we're going to be able to experience through this event. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the Olympic Games at home, and to be able to follow the French across a range of sports, cheering them on all the way to the end.
I grew up in Paris, so I have a lot of iconic places that I love, but I'm particularly attached to the 15th arrondissement. Walking along the quays, on the bridges, seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower at the same time, that's a unique experience for me! I like rollerblading, so when I decide to go for a walk, I go along the quays of the Seine from the 15th arrondissement to just past Notre-Dame, and I rediscover Paris at every moment, its monuments, the Parisians, and that's what I love. For me, the best part of Paris is by night, the City of Light really lives up to its name! Even though I've lived here for almost 30 years, I'm always amazed by the city at night.
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