Paris 2024 Olympic Games: “It’s a day where we had to save the furniture,” explained Jean-Baptiste Bernaz after his first day of sailing racing

Une première journée où Jean-Baptiste Bernaz a pris ses marques. MAXPPP – Petter Arvidson

L’athlète français en ILCA 7 (dériveur) a couru seulement deux manches, jeudi 1er août au cours d’une journée fortement perturbé par le manque de vent.

Jean-Baptiste Bernaz: “This first day was nice with a first round on the so-called “media” circle with the encouragement of the public, the press boats, the media boats, in short, the great madness. It's nice to feel these sensations, we often only feel them at the Olympic Games for us or in the final of a world championship. I wasn't very inspired tactically on the other hand, but I'm super happy with the way I came back in the round.

After we switch, we spend a lot of time on the water to go to the other round, “Frioul”. It was the same, I wasn't very inspired tactically and a bit timid at the start, so a round that I try to save. These are rounds that we might keep, so every point counts, we are at the Olympic Games and things will quickly go downhill, so we have to hang on when things are not going well and make a move when they are, so today was a day where we had to save the day.

I know all the skippers of the media boats, they are my friends, plus I have the particularity of being from the South, so really it's a lot of people that I know, not to mention the people who come to see me on the sea wall, those who feel French too, it's a lot of excitement and it's special, but I'm rather enjoying it that it stresses me out, I love it.

While waiting, I try to stay at least connected with the wind, we call that keeping the wind's story, because the wind has a story during the day. At one point it gets up, it goes out, all that, until we cut off at the last round, I try to keep a little of the rhythm of what's happening. After that it doesn't play much, there are times when we suddenly gain places, the wind is a little erratic with this heat, it has trouble getting into the bay, but it changes quickly, we'll adapt.

Overall I am happy with everything technical, the speed, the commitment, my starts are correct, but we will try to work on them in the competition, to be more and more precise and engaged in terms of options. Today what he lacked was a bit of tactics. The first day, it's hard to make a clear commitment to a choice; taking a big risk is complicated because there are five days left and you don't want to gun from day one. It was a day where even we saw the best who remained in the middle of the line, no one really committed to choices, there were people who made big mistakes to hit buoys, to touch other boats. These are the Games where everyone is a little stressed too. It was an average day, it won't go down in history but it has the quality of having already been a decent first day. We will try to keep it and increase the level as the week goes on.

We focused everything on versatility in terms of wind, I lost a little weight to be a little more comfortable in light weather like today . Tomorrow it's going to be conditions that I like and the fleet is more level in general, the small nations have more difficulty in these conditions so there will be more space on the plan of water and there is a chance that we will see fewer dots tomorrow if there is wind."