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07/10/2024
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Matisse Pacaud
A great competitor competing in the 2024 Olympic Games!
Matisse’s adventure began at the age of 8 at the Club Nautique de la Croisette in Cannes. After a few years of leisure, he started competing in the Optimist class at his current club, the Cannes Yacht Club. After 6 years in the Optimist, he switched to the Laser 4.7, then the Laser Radial, where he became French Champion twice and Mediterranean Champion twice. In September 2019, he finishes his Junior years in Laser and decides to embark on an Olympic project, in double-handed and mixed with his current team-mate Lucie De Gennes.
“It was a huge challenge because we were both coming from solo sailing (the Laser), so we had everything to learn! It was easier for me to adapt because I was already doing it alone in a Laser. On the other hand, it was more complicated for my partner because she no longer had a helm and she had to manage the balance of the boat.”
Matisse PACAUD
On the way to Olympia
Lucie and Matisse are training at the Pôle France sailing centre in Marseille to prepare for the 2024 Olympics. From their first year together, the results have been promising for the rest of their adventure (U21 World Champion, U21 European Vice Champion 2021). Today, they have been members of the French youth team for 2 years and are in the running for selection for the Olympic Games.
Matisse and Lucie, three-time world junior champions
They’re unstoppable! Double European champions in 2022 and 2023, junior world champions in 2021 (U21) and again in 2022, fourth at the senior world championships in 2022, FFV hopefuls of the year, first Frenchmen at this summer’s Olympic 470 world championships in Den Haag (Netherlands), Matisse Pacaud and Lucie de Gennes, members of the Cannes Yacht Club, have just won a third consecutive world title in Nida, Lithuania, on the shores of the Baltic. Thanks to their
their comfortable lead after eleven races, they had won even before the Medal Race reserved for the top ten finishers, to be contested on Sunday 3 September 2023, where points count double. A real achievement.
“If they keep their crown, they’ll be among the very best. Not many people have won back-to-back world championships… And they’re so young (they’re not even 22 yet) that they’ll still be young next year. I’m not sure that most people have grasped the scale of what they are achieving…”.
Philippe Mourniac, Director of the Frenh teams
