For them, the Olympic Games have a special feeling.
Lisa Barbelin and Thomas Chirault are a couple and competing at Paris 2024. They could enter the closed circle of couples in the Olympic medal life – like the French fencers Manon Apithy-Brunet and Boladé Apithy.
Thomas, Olympic men’s team runner up with Jean-Charles Valladont and Baptiste Addis, already has a medal around his neck. A success to which he inevitably associates with Lisa, with whom he has been with for four years.
The two archers met around the INSEP shooting ranges, the National Sports Institute of Excellence and Performance, with Lisa entering the French team two years after Thomas.
“A few years in, we started to meet a little more so to speak,” says Chirault. “And since then, it’s been a great adventure that we’ve shared together.”
“We are living magical moments together and we are very happy to be able to make these Olympic Games. Here, in Paris, at home, both of us, it’s really something incredible.”
Barbelin, 24 years old, and Chirault, 26 years old, have a special story: being in a couple and training together as high level athletes. Moreover, for more than a year, they have both been in a French team that has prepared for a home Olympic Games.
A situation not always so easy, but the two believe they have managed it very well.
“It’s true that it is sometimes difficult because we have to remain very professional,” admits Lisa. “But we are both smart people, and I think we can balance between the two quite easily.”
“I don’t think there are many negative points,” adds Thomas. “In any case, we get a lot of positives.”
“Lisa is someone you can discuss with on a lot of different topics, even on the very technical parts of archery, and it is an additional richness we have together, to understand each other very easily.”
Under the orders of Korean coach Oh Seon Tek, who has revolutionised the methods of the French national team, adopting a training schedule never seen before at INSEP, this daily intense life could have impacted the couple.
This is not the case. According to Thomas, the relationship was made an even stronger force from the demanding preparation.
“On a daily basis, we knew it was challenge and so could discuss things that didn’t go so good. It’s great to be able to chat to each other without any taboos, with a lot of expertise and it serves us really well for performances.”
Lisa and Thomas are naturally inseparable. They live together, train together… and study at the same university.
Thomas is currently studying a master’s degree in engineering at Sorbonne Polytech. Lisa is also at Sorbonne and is in her third year of a chemistry degree. A path that Chirault has already followed before he reorientated himself towards engineering, having a particular passion for nanomaterials.
And even if Barbelin likes, as she often says, to have a ‘busy head’, she decided to put her studies on hold, allowing herself to fully focus on Olympic preparation.
With the goal of a medal. A joy that she has already been able to live through the success of her partner.
“It has brough me so many emotions,” she says. “The boys were very strong, all three of them, and it’s true that seeing him with this medal around him made me say ‘wow’; actually, we can do it together.”
The French number one archer and her partner will take part in the men and women individual finals this weekend.
When we say that they are inseparable… even for the days after the Games.
“We’re going to take a vacation for sure and enjoy it,” confides Lisa.
“For now, we haven’t planned anything,” says Thomas. “We will take a moment to recharge our batteries in a quiet corner of nature somewhere.”
With, perhaps, a medal around each of their necks.
