"At the Olympics, there was a problem inside me": Var windsurfer Nicolas Goyard talks about his post-Olympic reconstruction

Back to square one. Nicolas Goyard began the iQFoil World Championship this Saturday in Aarhus, Denmark, after a long training camp with the French team. The world title has eluded the Var native since 2021, when he reigned supreme in the Olympic discipline.

The Caledonian Windsurfing and Sailing Association resident is now looking for a second wind, after his failed Olympics last summer on the Marseille seaside. He spoke candidly about this failure in the French Sailing Federation's podcast "Sailors on Sailors."

Nicolas Goyard: "I questioned myself"

"Clearly the Games were not a success for me in terms of results, but on a personal and human level. They (the Games) marked a turning point for me, I learned a lot about myself, I questioned myself on a lot of things," he emphasizes.

"Physically and technically, everything was well put together, even if you can always do better, but there were things I wasn't mentally prepared for. There was a problem within me that I hadn't detected, in my approach to performance-related matters. Seeing that has helped me a lot, in sport as well as in life in general," he adds.

During this introspection, Nicolas Goyard also admitted that he is now working with a mental trainer. "I had never been followed by a shrink or a mental trainer before. I thought I knew myself, but in fact, I didn't know myself (which wasn't the case), or at least not well enough. I then found myself face to face with myself, and that's not something you experience every day."

Marie Barrué: "The day it ended, I breathed"

Alongside her, Marie Barrué (28 years old), a solo dinghy sailor in the ILCA6 (formerly Laser Radial), also looked back on her Olympic experience as a reservist, alongside the Frenchwoman Louise Cervera (tenth in the Games). A unique but difficult experience to live for the resident of Coych .

"After the selection was announced, I took a month off without my phone, I was sick as a dog, all the pressure was gone at that moment. Shock, 40°C fever, it was really hell. Then I came back to training, I was torn between feeling important in the project and finding my place, being myself. I learned but, on the other hand, I had trouble finding myself again," she says.

"In the end, it was still a very positive experience, but the day it ended, I took a deep breath. My entire chakra came back down to me, and I said to myself: that's it, Marie is back. I understood at that moment that the worst thing in our lives is not having a goal," admits the winner of a World Cup event in Medemblik, Netherlands, in 2021.