Gymnastics: Marine Boyer and the French women’s team come in 6th place at the European Championships

At the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships, Marine Boyer, supported by Crédit Coopératif, suffered a disappointment on the beam but managed to qualify for the all-around final. The French team finished in 6th place.

In the running for a medal

With just fifteen months to go before the Olympic Games Paris 2024, every competition is now extremely important for the French athletes. Whatever the outcome, positive or negative, each event provides the contestants with an opportunity to hone their performance, correct their mistakes, and learn from experience. These European Artistic Gymnastics Championships held in Antalya, Turkey, were also a test event for the French gymnasts. The French women’s team taking part was a rejuvenated version of itself after the Australian coach Martine George decided to give a moment of respite to some of the leading lights, including Melanie De Jesus Dos Santos, supported by Banque BCP.

In view of the membership of the team, and following her promising 4^th place on the beam last November during the World Championships in Liverpool and her silver medal on the beam during the World Cup in Baku last March, Marine Boyer, the gymnast from Reunion Island supported by Crédit Coopératif via the Performance Pact and a member of the Meaux club, could legitimately look forward to winning a medal… all the more so as she had already reached two European podiums in 2016 and 2018.

Fall on the beam

We know that her 4^th place at the World Championships in England was hard for her to stomach. But this is Marine Boyer’s strength: her ability to constantly question herself and to keep on working. She has trained hard to smooth out the defects, to perfect those tiny details that make a good performance great. Unfortunately, after completing a very stable routine, Marine fell on her tight roundoff on her favorite apparatus. This obviously came as a fresh disappointment for the young woman whose goal was so clearly that of winning a medal: a disappointment but not an impediment. Gymnastics is a magnificent sport but it is so hard on the gymnasts who have to train every day if they want to ascend to the highest level. They need to be deeply committed and extremely determined. For Marine, she must transform this disappointment into a new well of motivation for the months to come. What is more, thanks to her fine performance in the floor exercise – of the same caliber as the performance that won her a gold medal at the World Cup last month – she qualified for the final of the all-around event, something she had failed to do for the past six years… but, ultimately, she was prevented from competing by a bout of ophthalmic migraines. In the end, the French team finished 6^th overall. With the return of its leader Melanie de Jesus Dos Santos, the French will now be training hard in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics.