2023-12-14 16:58:32
Yannick Noah approaches this new challenge as “an extraordinary human adventure”. She could also add a few gold letters to her prestigious list of achievements during the Games, which will take place from August 28 to September 8 on the clay court of Roland-Garros.
After guiding France to success in the Davis Cup and Fed Cup, Yannick Noah was offered a major new challenge on Thursday, being named captain of the men’s wheelchair tennis team for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
“Our French Paralympic team will be under the leadership of a captain called Yannick Noah. He will be captain of the French men’s team for the JOPs,” announced Gilles Moretton, president of the FFT, during a press conference at Roland-Garros.
Noah approaches the new challenge he is about to take on as “an extraordinary human adventure”. She could also add a few gold letters (Paralympic) to her prestigious record during the Games, which will take place from August 28 to September 8 on the clay court of Roland-Garros. The same place where four decades earlier, he entered the history of French tennis.
“It’s a fantastic adventure. I’m super excited. We are currently in a phase where we are getting to know each other […] We are eight months away from the Games and for the moment the objective is to improve on a daily basis,” commented Noah, in a press release released by the FFT. He has already participated in several training courses with the team’s players, including Stéphane Houdet, Paralympic doubles champion in Beijing, Rio and Tokyo.
“I said to myself: what a good idea”
“The idea of being captain came from Stéphane […] He told me: + you played individually, you won the Davis Cup, the Fed Cup but you’re not a real crazy person because you never came with us +. I was overwhelmed and I said to myself what a good idea,” said the former Roland-Garros winner.
“Yannick will take on this challenge because he is a man of challenges, he has demonstrated it, he is a leader of men. He still wanted to give for our federation and that’s good, because he can contribute,” assured Gilles Moretton.
“A man of challenges”, now aged 63, who managed to meet them one by one during his brilliant career in tennis. Firstly when he was a player, with his unforgettable coronation at Roland-Garros in 1983, which remains the last victory of a French player in a Grand Slam.
Then when he took on the role of captain of the French men’s and women’s teams and the triumphs in the Davis Cup and Fed Cup, transmitting a rage to win which has several times worked miracles, to the point of inheriting the image of a sorcerer of winning. You only had to see the rebirth of Henri Leconte and the trance of Guy Forget in 1991 against the Americans Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, to have proof of this unique know-how which led to the coronation in the Davis Cup, trophy which had not been raised by the Blues for 59 years. Noah did it again in 1996, with Forget leading another generation, that of Cédric Pioline, Guillaume Raoux, Arnaud Boetsch, to win the event once again in Sweden.
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