The skier from Val d’Isère found his skiing at the best of times after a frustrating first part of the season punctuated by a single victory in the World Cup, his only podium.
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A wounded animal is always more dangerous. In the lion’s den, at the start of the slalom of the Olympic Games on Wednesday February 16, Clément Noël was on the hunt. Affected by a succession of disappointments since his exit in the World Cup at Madonna di Campiglio on December 22 (no podium in five races including two outings), the Vosges has emerged with his fangs at the best of times, to offer himself the right to taste gold.
He dreamed of it. Obviously like everyone else. But above all, Clément Noël needed it to remobilize the unrecognizable skier he had become for several weeks. The skier of Val d’Isère “hoped to change the situation“on this Olympic slalom”where everything is reset“. Because after offering a masterclass on the first slalom of the season, at home in Val d’Isère (Jakobsen, 2nd, at +1”40), the machine had jammed several times thereafter.
First at the end of December at Madonna where he stumbled on the last post of the route when he had relegated the competition to more than a second. Then in Adelboden, on January 9. The Frenchman was out on the first run. “Madonna is not the turning point. Rather in Adelboden, where I go out in the first run skiing rather badly. And there it made me doubt a little bit, so I didn’t manage to free myself on the next race at Wengen which is a track that I like very much.“
Eighth at Wengen, 15th at Kitzbühel, 9th at Schladming, his month of January was worrying, far from his usual standards.
“Each time, my first runs were good so that means the ski was there. But behind, there were disappointments in the second run for different reasons. Most of it is played in the head. That’s why I wasn’t good in January.”
Clement Noelat franceinfo: sport
So what happened between January 25, in Schladming, and his day of Olympic glory? “I was afraid that he would still doubt a little, yes it’s true, I was afraid“, confides very moved Frédéric Perrin, the manager of the technical group of the French alpine ski team. “In the approach, when we are with them, I tried to remove all these doubts from him, by being super detached, super calm, super cool because I didn’t want him to doubt. But it was not easy after all that he had chained in January.“
To erase this disappointing month of January, Clément Noël had put his head back: “After Schladming, I had rested quite a bit. I had a quiet week at home with rest and physical preparation. I think it did me good to cut a little. And then, before arriving here, we went to Italy for three days of training which were quite good. And it was beneficial.“His opponents have seen it.
Wednesday in Yanqing, all these evils, these doubts, evaporated in 49 seconds and 79 hundredths. “When he’s like that, he’s just excellent. He has this feeling of magic with the snow, he becomes one with the element“, slips his coach. In this second round, he managed to redo “his best skiing“, he admits the gold around his neck and his eyes reddened by the cold and his tears which have flowed.
Clément Noël thus sounded his revolt “the day that matters most“. At only 24 years old, the French slalomer enters through the great door in the history of French alpine skiing, alongside notably Antoine Dénériaz (2006), Jean-Pierre Vidal (2002) and Jean-Claude Killy (1968). A new giant of Olympus.