This is the great operation of the weekend: at 34 years old, Samir Aït-Saïd took advantage of the World Cup in Baku to get closer to the Olympic quota that he aspires to compete in the Paris Games. This Saturday, he took 3rd place in the rings final (14.633 points), behind the Chinese You Hao (14.90 pts) and Zou Jingyuan (14.866 pts). But the first two not scoring any points in the race for the Olympic seeds (China is qualified by team), it is the Frenchman who pockets the 30 points at stake. After 3 stages, he totals 73 points and thus exceeds the Azerbaijani Simonov (64 pts) and North Korean Jong Ryong-il (56 pts). This bodes well as there is only one stage left in Doha (April 17-20) before definitively establishing the ranking based on the three best results and designating the two men who will participate in the Games. “It feels good,” breathes Samir Aït-Saïd. I’m in a very good position but, in my head, it’s still war. »
On the phone, the flag bearer of the Blues during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games in 2021 is questioned by opponents and even foreign judges who come to congratulate him. “Clearly, I am gaining momentum and I am making an impression with the quality of my work,” he notes. Everything we have put in place is really starting to pay off. With my staff, there is good harmony, total trust, I need it to function. » He who has often suffered from injuries, like this bicep burst just before his Olympic final in Japan (4th) and which still annoys him sometimes. “But with all the work I do in physical preparation and prevention, working hard while listening to my body, I feel like I’m galloping and being twenty years old again. It’s disturbing, even shocking! »
However, Samir Aït-Saïd affirms “not to be smart”, aware of the issues. “The level is so high, the adrenaline and the pressure at the peak,” he says. And if, with his experience, he copes with it, his teammates have more difficulty. By not qualifying for their respective floor and parallel bars finals, Benjamin Osberger and Cameron-Lie Bernard gave up valuable points and perhaps even all hope of qualifying for their first Olympic Games in Baku. On the ground, Osberger (who will compete in the pommel final on Sunday) is in 3rd place among the qualifiers but at a very respectable distance from the first two, the South Korean Ryu Sung-hyun (80 pts) and the Belarusian under neutral flag Yagor Sharamkov ( 50 pts in just 2 steps). On the parallel bars, Bernard is 5th among the qualifiers with 41 points, far from the Colombians Barajas (71 pts) and Calvo Moreno (68 pts), knowing that only one will be able to win a quota, and the Uzbek Abdurakhimov (66 pts).