Pascal Piriou, the President of the League of Brittany tells us about the growth of padel in his area and appears again on its historical past with this rising sport.
It began in 2016. I used to be President of the Concarneau Tennis Club and I launched the concept of placing padel in the membership. And a 12 months later, we discovered ourselves with these two tracks.
Why ?
For twenty years now, I’ve traveled to help France throughout Davis Cup competitions. And someday on this event, in Italy, I met an individual from the French Tennis Federation who submitted to me the concept of placing padel in Concarneau.
At first I did not actually perceive, I believed she was speaking to me about stand-up paddle! The error was frequent at the time however issues have developed properly in recent times !
So once I got here again from this journey, I needed to combine padel into our challenge.
The evolution of padel at the Concarneau membership illustrates the good well being and potential of this sport. We went from 150 to 500 graduates in the membership between 2018 and 2021.
This enhance could be attributed to the new tennis amenities and the membership home, but additionally to padel.
We have 120 100% padel licensees. And we will say that general, opposite to what one may assume, these are gamers who don’t essentially come from tennis. Lots of former soccer gamers, over 35.
It was the first associative membership to have two outside padel courts. For 6 months, the grounds have been virtually empty. It have to be mentioned that we had not seen an illustration. People handed by however didn’t make any reference to this sport.
And then immediately, by the exercise of the membership and the increase of padel in France, we noticed the grounds being taken by storm!
The Garden in Rennes was additionally one of the precursors of this sport in the area by betting on padel.
In Concarneau we’re already saturated. And there’s a challenge for 3 indoor padel courts. It is for certain, if we handle to construct tracks, this sport will develop exponentially.
At first we checked out this sport but it surely remained on the sidelines. I went to the Garden, I performed. I’m a modest 15/5 rated tennis participant. We realized that it was very playful and rapidly.
Among the licensees, as I mentioned, there are various soccer gamers over 35 years outdated. They say to themselves “I don’t want to take spikes anymore, I don’t want to be alone in my gym, I’m going to padel.”
Gilles Moretton was rapidly very motivated by this sport: “We, the federation, are there to help the clubs. And if to avoid wasting sure clubs, we’ve got to place padel, we are going to put it. “. With these words, he came to explain to the recalcitrant that it was not necessary to fight against this sport, but on the contrary to work with it. Both sports can be brought together.
Today, we can clearly see that there is a very good atmosphere. The padel players stay at the club, have a beer.
Besides, I heard that tennis players stop to play padel. But this is false, tennis players continue to play tennis, even if they can also play padel. It is my conviction: these are complementary sports.
I think there is no cannibalization between tennis and padel. There is a development plan over 4 years and we put particular emphasis on padel since we are late in particular compared to the southern leagues.
We must be very careful about the noise pollution. This is perhaps the only negative element of this sport. Attention should be paid to this, especially for outdoor structures.
The amateur padel player is louder than the amateur tennis player. Which is nice for the atmosphere but sometimes less so for a neighborhood very close to the club. Obviously, we must not scare, but we draw the attention of the clubs to this point.
In Brittany, we had 27 tracks in September 2021. Today, we already have ten more. And we also have plans for around 30 additional tracks for 2022.
We try to push clubs and municipalities to build indoors because inevitably in Brittany, we can have a lot of rain.
Padel and tennis have the same engine, but padel is like a booster for tennis: it’s very good for conviviality.
We find the atmosphere of the tennis clubs of the 80s, it’s extraordinary. It is magic.
Xan is a padel fan. But also rugby! And his posts are just as punchy. Physical trainer of several padel players, he unearths atypical posts or deals with current topics. It also gives you some tips to develop your physique for padel. Clearly, he imposes his offensive style as on the padel court!