This year, at Roland-Garros, fashion is white polo tinted pale yellow. French tennis player Lucas Pouille, former world number 10 down to 670e rank after going through a depression, has just climbed into the main draw of the Grand Slam tournament by the arduous road of qualifying. On the court, he wore an outfit reminiscent of that of Yannick Noah, the day of his coronation on Parisian clay, June 5, 1983.
The dedication is signed Le Coq sportif, their common equipment supplier, for the 40e anniversary of this victory, the last for a Frenchman in men’s singles at the Porte d’Auteuil; thirty-seven years had already passed between this one and that of its direct predecessor, a certain Marcel Bernard in 1946. An oasis in the desert.
“When I think back to his victory, I was 4 years old, it brings me a lot of emotions (…). [Yannick Noah] made me love tennis. To find myself director of the tournament to celebrate an anniversary of his coronation, it is a pride and a great pleasure for me “, explained Amélie Mauresmo. Saturday May 27, the singer tennis player gives a concert on the Philippe Chatrier court and, the next day, on the first day of the 2023 edition, a fresco in his effigy will be unveiled.
It has never seemed so complicated to answer the eternal question around the name of his heir to the prize list. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has retired, Gaël Monfils will not be long in imitating him… and none of their compatriots is currently among the thirty best in the world. The years pass, Noah, he endures through the generations.
At the time when the central court of Roland-Garros had been invaded by a human tide to celebrate the player with dreadlocks and the Rasta sponge wrist, Fary had not yet been born. However, the artist who will produce his show this summer in this same stadium, places the feat of the former tennis player at the height of that of ” [l’équipe de] France [de football] 1998 » to the national heritage. ” [Noah] is one could not be more French in what it represented in the history of sport, and, at the same time, it crystallizes a debate which is that of the children of immigration “notes the comedian, interviewed by the magazine 40-A.
“50 million Noahs! »
In the early 1980s, French sport was looking for champions. And the charismatic Franco-Cameroonian managed to unite the public even before winning the Grand Slam tournament. The headline of the newspaper The TeamSaturday June 4, 1983, the day before the famous final against the Swede Mats Wilander, illustrates it: “50 million Noahs! ».
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