Padel: Vincent Clerc and Grégory Lamboley tell of their passion for the discipline as the Human Padel Open starts this week in Toulouse
The two former partners of Stade Toulousain fell in love with padel. A few days before the opening of the Toulouse stage of the World Padel Tour (June 15-19), they talk about this new fad.
How did you discover padel?
Vincent Clerc: So I discovered that in 2013. I had a knee injury and I did part of my rehabilitation at the Sofia-Antipolis tennis center in the Alpes-Maritimes. And at that time, I met Robin Haziza who was launching one of the first padel centers with Jérémy Toulalan. Olivier Giroud was in the center at the same time as me and we exchanged a few balls. And Robin told me at the time that he wanted to develop padel in France. I then replayed there at the end of my career and voila, I added well and it went like that.
Grégory Lamboley: Me, I started playing before the end of my career but I really got into it afterwards. I had a lot of friends who played there, I liked it and they redid the padel courts at the Stade Toulousain Tennis. Obviously it was easy to get there and we got into it. It’s a sport where you have so much fun that you want to come back.
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Do you play it regularly?
VC: At the moment Greg is a little ahead of me, but the challenge is to reconstitute the pair that was in the room for years during trips with Stade Toulousain, but this time on a padel court. So I have to get back to it. I play it regularly, I would like to put a little more. He takes a lot of lead by playing between noon and two, I can’t really at the moment (laughs).
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GL: Well, Vincent has a busy schedule between all his activities so it’s complicated. But when we can we do it. After that I have a whatsapp group with Stade Toulousain and we organize that every week. Thomas Ramos plays quite a bit in particular. Personally, I play it two to three times a week. Sometimes even four. In fact when I was young, before rugby I played tennis, squash and casually it looks like it. I quickly managed to have fun, to have fun thanks to my little knowledge of racket sports. With a few basics we progress quickly.
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How do you go from rugby to padel?
VC: I have always really liked racket sports. And in padel there is a playful side then you play as a team, there is strategy and we remove the dimension of contact because for my part I no longer wanted it. The fact of having fun and progressing because we are progressing relatively and that’s great.
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GL: The efforts are not the same as in rugby, that’s clear. Padel can be a very physical sport but you can also be cool. But if you take the game, you can send and there on the court. Then at the level of the joints, it’s less restrictive than in rugby, there are fewer shocks, the ground is synthetic so it’s more flexible. For the post-career, it is ideal.
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The “stars” will compete on the court
Vincent Clerc and Grégory Lamboley will meet on the court on Friday for the All Star tournament. Champions of many sporting disciplines will compete in an exhibition competition. Thierry Omeyer, Dominique Arribagé, Olivier Dacourt and many others will put on a short. Most of the tournament will take place at the 4Padel in Toulouse-Colomiers on Friday June 17 and the final will take place the next day at the Palais des sports in Toulouse.