Montpellier judoka Blandine Pont helps improve the daily lives of high-level student athletes

Blandine Pont s'engage pour les générations futures. BP – BP

With her Tetetsport association, Blandine Pont has entered into contact with universities and major schools so that they can allow high-level athletes to follow the higher education of their choice. Thanks to Montpellier, mentalities are changing. 

How was your association Tetetsport born ?

Linking my high-level judo practice and my medical studies was very complicated. Things needed to change and athletes had to come forward to improve the conditions of the double project during higher education. In September 2022, I created this association with my father and athletes joined the adventure.

What difficulties have you encountered in your journey ?

The main difficulty is time. I train twice a day, not counting recovery periods, training and competition starts. We have a special relationship with time which becomes complicated when it comes to studying in person. It was also complicated to get absences and lateness accepted by teachers who are not used to individualizing the curriculum. Finally, there was no way to make up for missed exams.

At the start of your high-level career, we even explained to you that it was not a good idea to combine judo and studies ?

10 years ago, I was made to understand that I needed to invest 100% in sport without having studies that were too heavy to follow at the same time. Today, mentalities have evolved.

Was your association able to participate in progress on this subject ?

Since 2022, I have been able to act within the university environment and that of the major schools. At university, I met Stéphane Braconnier, president of Panthéon-Assas University in Paris and of France Universités. He was then responsible for taking stock of the state of sport at the university with several ministries. I was particularly listened to, my words were important. I was also able to participate in working groups with Science-Po Paris, Essec and Centrale Supélec who wanted to create a campus connected to Insep for high-level athletes. After numerous exchanges, this was a success since these schools will create the HEPTA Bachelor, a new multidisciplinary training, 80% dematerialized, at the end of which sports students will be able to join one of the three schools to follow a master's degree.