Fellows Book Online Version 2020

21 to break the world record. So what I am discussing with you today is how we built our team, how we built our success, how together we went beyond impossible. First of all, we dreamt it, the first thing our coach told us before we started to create history, to begin this adventure, is: “It’s possible”. Our coach Jo Maisetti knew that it was possible for this team to realize something incredible. He didn’t know what exactly but he showed us the data, because he loved data and numbers, he showed us the evidence and explained to us that if we worked well, if we worked collectively, then we can do something incredible. And he shared his attitude with all the team. It’s possible was the first step. The second step was we had a common dream, a dream behind the objective. The objective was to win the race, to become European champion, but our common dreamwas to enter history books. And it was our highest aspiration and it’s different than the objective, because an objective is binary, you reach it or you don’t, but a dream has no limits. In a dream, there is also an emotional aspect, you can dream something and you feed your road with a dream. The dream is like a star in the sky that gives you the direction but you can never catch it. And our dream is to make history, even if we didn’t succeed and win the race, we could have still achieved our dreams. So sharing this dream was very important also to bring the team together. If we only had an objective, a goal, we could maybe have won the race but we would probably never have broken the world record. What drove us to the world record was the possibility to go beyond the goal. I think it’s important to share a dream to give people a lot of energy because an objective, a goal is sometimes too high for some and too low for others but the dream can concern the whole team. The second aspect, the second key for me was the confidence. We built confidence for a long time, it was really a key in our team. It was what connected us as a team, between the athletes but also all around the team. We had a high level of confidence in our coach, the medical and technical staff, with all the people around our team. This is very important, we built very strong confidence between us. The first step of the confidence is the respect. We respected each other in the team, we were nearly the same age and we were very respectful between us. And the second step is to know each other. You have to get to know the people on the track and off the track. That’s why we were regularly organizing training camps in the south of France not only to work or to train the baton exchanges , but also to work on the mindset. So we trained together better and more than other teams. Usually other relay teams train 2 months before the championship but we decided to work every month, we made three days of training together which is important for a relay team and that’s how we built our confidence. In the relay, you have to make decisions in a very short time and if not, the baton stick can fall down and you can be disqualified. You have to decide very quickly. In the relay you have the giver who holds the baton stick, and the receiver. You have a 30m exchange zone in which you have to exchange the baton as fast as possible and what is important is that the baton stick slows down as little as possible. Our goal was to become the best team in those 30m because if you are very strong in the 30m that means you are a team that works as a collective. By training we determined that the mark between Daniel Sangouma, who was my teammate who gave me the baton stick, and me was 8m and we worked a lot for that. The process was normally 8m and the process was clear and strong and we trained with high speed cameras to verify this process, but and this is the next point, I changed my mark. This day, I didn’t start 8m before Daniel Sangouma reached me, I started 10m and normally, our exchange should not have passed. For me, a good team is a team that has good reflextion , but a great team is a team that is able to have a very high level of adaptation. And I adapted myself at a very high level so that I started at 10m. Why? Because Daniel Sangouma arrived at a speed we had never seen before. Normally, he was able to run about 10s for 100m but on this leg, he run 8.84s which was an extraordinary time. It placed him at the level of Carl Lewis so it was incredible because we had never seen him running so fast. So either I stayed on the former mark, 8m and maybe we could have made a good exchange but not a change good enough to break the world record. To break the world record, to go to this level, you have to adapt yourself at a very high level and its possible because of the confidence, because of the high level of training, because of the mindset of the team and also because of the possibility that Daniel Sangouma gave me to realize something incredible after himself. For that I had to watch carefully, I had to select the pertinent information but it goes very fast, you see somebody running in front of you at 12m per second, so it’s difficult to adapt. So the training, and the confidence allowed me the possibility to make a good decision. Watch, select and feel more than analyze what was happening. Then I decided and acted at the same time very quickly. That was one of the keys that drove us to the record. In conclusion, we dared to change our way of training, we dared with confidence and authenticity, we dared to dream and to share our dreams, we dared changing our marks and we dared also acting as leaders. That’s how together we went beyond possible and broke the world record.