Regarding the Belgian Tornados, you may be wondering how I organized my coaching. In fact it became quite simple since I had already organized everything ten days before the competition.
As I explained the previous time, I asked three important questions to the athletes: what positive things can you bring to the group, what are the attitudes that allowed us to win 18 medals and how, through your body language , can you show your confidence to other teams? My role here was simply to remind them of their answers and to contextualize them.
We train like crazy all year round, and the primary goal is of course to see the Eiffel Tower, to qualify for Paris 2024. For this, we have three chances: by reaching a place in the top on Saturday 8, by finishing in one of the first two places in the repechage on Sunday (top 14), or by being one of the two fastest nations behind the 14 qualifiers.
Jacques Borlée's column: how to direct the brain towards future deadlines
The message expressed by the athletes was, in short, this: we are strong, but we must remain calm. It is important to remain a team, to be in unity: we encourage each other and we think positive. We focus on what we can control and therefore on ourselves.
Julien, source of inspiration
The fight that our friend Julien (Watrin) is winning is also a source of inspiration. It's up to us to imitate him, giving everything we have in our guts.
Then, during the warm-up, I recalled the different individual instructions. The athletes respected them to perfection and mastered their subject.
On Sunday, in the final, we knew that Belgium could win a medal despite the level of competition, which is incredible. During the briefing, I then asked my sons Kevin and Jonathan to share their experiences. They insisted on the need to properly manage the drawdown, a very difficult position at 600 meters, where density is very high.
Jacques Borlée's column: coaching is not just training
Following the contracture of Dylan, our first torchbearer, in the middle of the race, a situation that we could not have anticipated, we experienced difficulties at this moment in the race.
Robin Vanderbemden did very well, however, he managed to get the team back on track. Alexander Doom, whom I had put in 3 in order to protect him from his adductor strain, then Jonathan Sacoor in turn got into tune and managed their race very well.
The result was a 19th medal, bronze, which could easily have turned into silver without Dylan's injury. But it's a race! And we shouldn't be choosy when we see the incredible level of competition. France, who finished second at the Worlds last year, failed to make the top 14, and the Netherlands and Jamaica did not qualify either.
Direction Rome
Now, for our team, it is especially important to recover well and continue on this path. Heading to the European Championships, next month, in Rome!
