“I can't wait to see this fervor”: Hortense Limouzin and the French 3 × 3 basketball team impatient to start Listening Games (4min)

Every day in T'o Games, Théo Curin makes us live his Olympic Games in Paris 2024 through the gaze of a guest, actor of the event. On Monday, a few hours before the start of the competition, Hortense Limouzin, basketball player of the France 3 × 3 team, entrusted her excitement to Franceinfo.

The Hurtense is basketball player in the French 3 × 3 basketball team, as a leader. She started by making her ranges in the more traditional discipline of 5 × 5 basketball, before putting on the blue jersey of the 3X3 in 2019. Since then, she and her teammates have become world and European champions in 2022. Monday, July 29, the day before the start of the 3 × 3 Basketball Olympic events at the Paris 2024 Games, Hortense Limouzin said “Too excited”. “We arrived last Tuesday in the village and each day had its share of surprises, she says. Now we started to switch little by little in the concentration of the competition and it's great. “

Hortense Limouzin saw the fact of arriving in advance in the Olympic village as an advantage, because there is always something to discover or do. “We can go watch other sports on the many screens, to support France, Detail Hortense Limouzin. We can use all possible and unimaginable infrastructure, which have been set up for us. So it's okay, we don't go too much in circles “.

Living in the village also allows her to rub shoulders with other athletes from the French team, even if she has to brave her shyness to go and exchange with the most impressive. “It is true that if only to cross French, we actually trivialize it, tells Hortense Limouzin. All of a sudden, I realize that I have Antoine Dupont on my left and Teddy Riner on my right! It is quite crazy, too, to meet foreign athletes, as Simone Biles au Self or Carlos Alcaraz who makes her bike ride in the village. “

Basketball 3×3 being a derivative of 5×5, there are certain similarities between the two, but the discipline of Hortense Limouzin has some particularities. “”It is a completely different effort, because we play for 10 minutes, or in 21 points, sometimes even several times during the day, she explains. We play on 12 -second possessions, against 24 in five against five. The balloons are the same for girls and boys. And we are only on half a field, in music and outside.“

“It's urban, it's the very essence of street basketball.”

The Hurtense

on franceinfo

The 3 × 3 basketball events will take place on the Place de la Concorde in an atmosphere that will be special. “There will be lots of urban sports united and that's what we like in the 3×3. It is being attached to these urban sports, which are very popular and we love it”, explains Hortense Limouzin.

The French basketball team also participated in the opening ceremony and despite the rain, the atmosphere was electric. “I found that it had added a huge charm, because everything appears that there can be behind this kind of ceremony, had disappeared”, the Limon's Hortense says.

“We were like wet dogs and I felt like I got out of the shower.”

The Hurtense

on franceinfo

“But no one has fallen ill and that is the most important, Add Hortense Limouzin. There was something surprising, to make communion with the public and the end ceremony with the speeches to Céline, it was crazy anyway! “

The preparation for the Olympic Games has intensified since 2023 and Hortense Limouzin is perfectly concentrated and ready for this deadline. “The goal of the game is to take only the right one. I hope that the stress that I will have, will be a good stress and that it will wear me, she explains. I am often told, that beyond playing the games, you have to live them and I think that we are very lucky to play them at home. I can't wait to see this fervor, when you're going to put a foot on the ground. “