Meet Sébastien Vieilledent

Words: Tom Ransley

PHOTOGRAPHY FFAVIRON/ERIC MARIE

I need to warmup my English,” Sébastien Vieilledent says with a smile at the start of our interview. It’s mid-morning and I have forty-five precious minutes with FFAviron’s CEO.

Vieilledent took the lead role in June 2021, just before the Tokyo Olympics. Fortunately, it wasn’t his first rowing rodeo. The former Olympic champion won gold at Athens 2004 in the men’s double, it was his third and final Olympic Games as an athlete. After hanging up his sculls he spent ten years as a national team coach. First learning his trade at the Under 23 level, then building a sport science database for the French national team during the Beijing Olympiad, and finally coaching the men’s quad through to London 2012. After London he pivoted into the world of sports business, mostly working for UCPA, a large non-profit organisation within the French outdoor sports market. Upon returning to the international rowing fold, his first task as CEO of the French rowing federation was to secure a highly prized East German asset.

Warmed-up? Let’s go!

High Performance Strategy

France have flitted in-and-out of the top ten rowing nations at recent major championships. In the last few decades, fourth place is their best World Championship medal table ranking in a non-Olympic year (1993, 1997, 2005, 2010, 2017, 2018) and they finished in second and third place respectively, in 2016 and 2004. (Olympic year World Championships run a limited programme of events, excluding Olympic and Paralympic boat classes.)

France are consistent Olympic performers too, placing eleventh on the all-time Olympic rowing medal table. Their best Olympic medal table ranking came in 1952 at the Stockholm Games: third behind superpowers USA and USSR. For the three subsequent Olympics they continued to feature on the medal table until missing out from 1968 to 1992. They are currently on their longest Olympic medal winning streak, seven consecutive Games starting with Atlanta 1996, trumping the five Olympic Games (1920-1936) in which they medalled before World War II interrupted proceedings.

Their fifth-place finish at Tokyo, matches that of Athens (2004), Antwerp (1920) and Paris (1924), just shy of their fourth place at Sydney (2000), and shows a pleasingly steady ascent up the ladder (19th, 11th, and eighth at the three preceding Games).

So, all plain sailing for the incoming chief exec? Non!

A cautious Vieilledent highlights hidden dangers. “Tokyo was a success for France... but behind the two medals there were no boats in the Finals. I was taking on a country which had very good results at a special-context, post-Covid Games. One gold, one silver, but behind [them] there was nothing.”