REPORTING. "The Games started it all"…Local athletes delighted with renovations in the rear bases linked to the Paris 2024 Games
At the very top of the new starting hill perched eight meters away, Quentin Berton, member of the Compiègne-Venette (Oise) BMX club office, operates and takes video of the grid which holds the bikes before the start. A foreign delegation, whose identity will not be revealed, requested these images with a view to its possible visit to the Oise to train before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. But while waiting for the arrival of foreign athletes, the new track, built with the aim of being a rear base for the Olympics, benefits local athletes.
A few kilometers away, training is also in full swing at the Compiègne archery. The last few days have been rainy and cool, the shooting range is muddy, but that doesn’t matter for these young archers who have been benefiting since October 2022 from a brand new hall which allows them to shoot even in winter. With a view to being a training center for foreign delegations, an extension of the old archery was created with a glass wall, the windows of which are opened by the archers to shoot at targets located outside. This heated room represents “a considerable asset in an uncertain period in terms of weather”according to Guillaume Humetz, coach at the Archers de Compiègne club and training center.
Before the construction of this extension, archers rarely shot outside in winter. “We had two jogging pants, three thermal t-shirts… For the joints, it was complicated,” remembers Jeanne Lemert, young archer. With the other members of the club, they had to be content with indoor training, over shorter distances, at 18 meters, while they are now starting the outdoor season earlier, with targets at 60 or 70 meters.. “For some, they are young high-level athletes, so it allows them to better prepare for the outdoor season. The idea for them is to join the France pole or the INSEP, but for that they are evaluated in outdoor shooting. This weekend, they will participate in the Vittel trophy, and they are better prepared since they have kept a link with the Olympic distances over the winter season.”explains Guillaume Humetz.
In Venette, the training conditions for BMX riders have also changed significantly and benefit competitors, since the inauguration of the track in April 2023. “Among young people, things are evolving a little more quickly. We have some who have managed to move from the regional level to the national level. And the course between those who ride for leisure and those who ride for competition has changed: they have taken taste for competition”describe Quentin Berton and Hugues Leblanc, both former presidents of the club.
It must be said that the track has been brought up to international standards, notably with starting mounds at five and eight meters – the second being obligatory to host elite competitions – compared to a mound of three meters previously. Designed by Damien Godet, the same designer as the Paris 2024 Olympic track, it is also one of the rare tracks in France, the only one north of Paris, to have a double section on the first three straight lines, with a pro section for more experienced pilots, and another for younger pilots.
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