A little more than six months after her silver medal won in a Franco-French duel against Manon Apithy-Brunet, Sara Balzer gave herself the time to return to competition. The Olympic saber vice-champion will return to competition in Tunis on Saturday January 11 and Sunday January 12 after taking the time to “ digest » the emotion of the Olympics.
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It took him time to digest. In an interview with AFP, Sara Balzer explains that it took her a while to get back into the swing of competition. “ It was planned to be cut until October. And we postponed the recovery because I felt that I needed more time. Paris was so huge, so much happened that the body and mind still needed time to digest and decompress. I didn’t want to skip ahead, come back and maybe be disgusted a few months later. It was important for me too to experience all these emotions “, she said.
“ The stress we experienced, we will never experience again »
After his intense Olympic year, Sarah Balzer has set herself the goal of being world champion next summer in Georgia. “ That gives me time to prepare before then. It’s a nice title to get, so it motivates me “, says the Strasbourg resident. But she knows it will be very different from Olympics at home.
“ I think that the stress we experienced, we will never experience again. Honestly, it was superhumanshe admits. I don’t know how I managed all of this. So the stress, the emotions, the stakes, be home in front of everyone, being the favorite was a lot to manage. We train for 10 years for one day, so there is also the acceptance that maybe things will go wrong, but that doesn’t define us. And above all, what I learned was that the journey was important, and not so much the arrival. What I was able to learn as an athlete, as a woman, it was crazy » .
Unlike many other athletes, Sara Balzer will not have had the difficult task of finding new sponsors for this new Olympics. “ Most of my contracts ended after the Games. It’s often like that, we sign contracts, for the Olympics, or sometimes for just one year. I am lucky that almost all my partners are following me for the next Olympics. We were able to build relationships during these years, and I am very happy to see that even if Paris is over, they are still motivated to follow me », rejoices the one who indicates that without private partners, she will not be able to practice her sport.
Sara Balzer, world number 1, has not yet won an individual medal at the Worlds. She won team silver in 2022 in Cairo and in 2023 in Milan.