The Ukrainian coach, who had been appointed in September 2021 to reorganize high performance with the perspective of the 2024 Paris Games, will probably be dismissed.
MO12345LEMONDE
The adventure of Vitaly Marinitch at the head of the French male gymnastics team will have turned short. Appointed to this position in September 2021, the 52 -year -old Ukrainian technician is about to be dismissed for alcohol problems. According to L’Equipe , James Blateau, the president of the French Gymnastics Federation (FFG ), explains that it has asked “an end of mission to the State, which is its employer”. A decision far from harmless at eight months from the Olympic qualification for the 2024 Paris Games at the Worlds in Antwerp in Belgium (from September 29 to October 8).
It was during an internship in the Spanish seaside town of Palma de Mallorca, that Vitaly Marinitch skid. “I have been alerted that on this internship there was a problem of alcohol consumption but also inappropriate words, especially towards physiotherapy. These two things seem to me to be serious enough to suspend collaboration with Vitaly” , explains James Blateau in the columns of the sports daily.
“We fight every day on the problems of ethics and any type of violence. There, when it comes from the project manager, who must take, pilot the group, it is not acceptable. In fact, We lead to exclusion, I have no state of mind, the decision is easy to make, “assumes the president of the FFG.
marinitch does not deny the facts
Man with the six world podiums, including three titles as a gymnast, does not dispute the facts that are accused of. The one who also offered a global coronation in the United States in a coach role assures that he wanted to forge links with the gymnasts, but the latter deplored a far from isolated gap. “It’s sad, but the guy is sick. He very often felt alcohol in training,” said one of them to the team.
For several weeks, the coach has not had his head for sport. “This internship was to be a resumption, the launch of the season, with physical work and activities to oxygen. The first three days there was nothing planned. The worst is that his assistants were also helpless than us “, details another gymnast.
Vitaly Marinitch had already been forced to resign in 2016 by the American gymnastics federation After displaced gestures towards an ex-athlete two years earlier. What the FFG could not ignore, according to the journalist Thierry Vildary – Who revealed the deviations of the Ukrainian coach on Monday evening during the internship in Mallorca -, at the time of carrying his choice on the Ukrainian, in charge of the high performance of the French gym with the perspective of the 2024 Paris Games.
Vitaly Marinitch, forced to stay at home, the national technical management is already working on the reorganization of the French male team. If the national technical director, Kévinn Rabaud, does not exclude recruiting a new coach, he first plans to rely on “national experts” identified in the collective of FFG coaches to advance French athletes.