Winning at the top of one's game

In the summer of 2010, France was inundated by the number of sports medals won by its swimmers and athletes, placing France in first and second place respectively in Europe. Such success is not due to chance, nor to the spontaneous emergence of exceptional talent, but as a consequence of wide-ranging and radical changes initiated after France's defeat at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Claude Fauquet and his team devised a plan for French swimming which included an analysis of human performance at high levels of sport, an idea which is often at logger-heads with the usually accepted ideas. This analysis examines other views on the human condition as opposed to the Cartesian approach ; it refocuses on the relationship between the athlete and his coach ; it refutes the ideas of a 'high performance channel' or streaming ; and excludes all archetypes of champions. Today, the ideas emanating from this project have been implemented to improve high level sport in France together with structural changes in French sport.