February 22nd 2009 was always going to be an emotional night for Arnaud Tournant. In the 13 years since he burst on to the scene with a Silver medal at the Junior Worlds, Tournant
Just four years after his Junior Worlds debut, Tournant won Gold in the Team Sprint at the Sydney Olympics. Not bad for a 22 year old. But for a 22 year old that had already won seven rainbow jerseys – four Team Sprint world titles and three Kilo titles – and broken the 1km Time Trial World Record, it was just an accident of birth that had kept him off the Olympic podium for so long. If he’d been born a year earlier he might well have been ready for Atlanta; two years earlier and he certainly would.
Since then he’s added another seven World Championships (another Kilo title, a Sprint title and five more Team Sprint Golds) and two more Olympic Silver medals and a Bronze medals - and broken the Kilo world record again in 2001 – a record that stands to this day.
Think about that. Between 1998 and 2008, Tournant was in the winning Team Sprint team in 8 out of 11 World Championships. And in 2003, when he ‘only’ got a silver, France lost to Germany by a tenth of a second.
Retirement’s a flexible affair these days – even when you announce it two years in advance. Although he officially retired after the Olympics in Beijing - he did ride the Milan 6 Days but sat out the World Cup Series, getting accustomed to his new role as directeur sportif of the Cofidis track team – Tournant was delighted to have one last outing at the Revolution.
Speaking with trackcycling at the start of his last ever race meeting Tournant confessed he was feeling slightly nervous and was expecting to have to work during the evening “This will be a hard race meeting!”. We’d arranged to talk to him once he’d finished riding and before he returned to the track side with his French team mates for the Team Sprint. As always, he was happy to oblige, but seemed genuinely concerned that he might have difficulty by that point. It wasn’t clear if he was worried about his English, his emotion or his exhaustion at that point.
Looking back over his incredible career, Tournant acknowledged the dedicated, sacrifice and hard work that goes into being the world’s best. Interviewed on the track he struggled slightly to find the right English term for the return on that investment, but former World Pursuit champion Hugh Porter was on hand to help out with vocabulary: “Satisfaction and pleasure”.
He acknowledged the Manchester crowd, too. “I have a lot of great memories in this Velodrome from World Championships and the Revolutions. I did my first five years ago and it has always been a great pleasure to come here. There is such passion. The crowd is knowledgable – one of the best in the world - and they make Revolution a good show and we all have a good time.”
Asked which year he rated as his most memorable, Arnaud said that 2000 was the year that stands out in his memory. In particular, he has fond memories of taking the world kilometre record for the first time. He couldn’t have expected his 2001 record to stand for so long – or for Britain’s Chris Hoy to try to take it and fail by just 0.005 seconds (with an aero front wheel fitted the wrong way round...).
It was fitting, that Tournant’s good friend Sir Chris put in a special guest appearance to wish Arnaud Tournant a long and happy retirement, and to thank him for being a superb opponent over the past ten years.
With his racing career now over, the likeable Frenchman seems to have made the move into team management with Cofidis’ track team, where he has a good mix of . But he’s already looking beyond that role. He hopes to be considered for the post of velodrome manager when the new velodrome opens in his home town of Roubaix in 2011. French Revolution, anyone?