French judo legend David Douillet was able to attend the third Olympic victory of his designated successor, Teddy Riner, this Friday.

He had previously spoken about the latter for Ouest France and had mentioned a hypothetical duel between them.

In such a context, his presence was almost essential.

In truth, David Douillet certainly did not want to miss Teddy Riner’s final for anything in the world, this Friday, at the Paris Olympics. So he was at the Arena Champ-de-Mars to experience this umpteenth moment of history and was able to congratulate the new triple Olympic champion in person after his triumph:

A fight against Teddy Riner? David Douillet without detour

Obviously moved to see Riner crowned on his home turf, David Douillet expected nothing less from him.

Interviewed a few days earlier by Ouest France, he predicted a gold medal for him and said all the good things he thought of him:

David Douillet: What impresses me about him is his ability to get back to the level, to continue.

After the Tokyo Games, he still found the strength to go to Paris at 35. I stopped at 31 and I was already exhausted.

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The hardest part is not doing the Games, it’s training every day.

Hats off to him. It takes a lot of courage, self-denial.

He started very young, much younger than me.

The longevity of his career is extraordinary. These are his fifth Olympics, it’s crazy.

To consider him better than him? The former Minister of Sports would not necessarily go that far:

David Douillet: Has he surpassed me? In terms of the number of titles, yes. But once again, each era is difficult to compare. For me, we had a world championship every two years and for him, it’s every year.

Just for that, it’s complicated. And who doesn’t tell you that today, with the new rules, I would have known a lot of defeats?

A final hypothesis that also leads us to wonder what the outcome would have been of a fight between the two sacred monsters of French judo.

In the absence of knowing, the elder states that he would have taken great pleasure in facing his French counterpart:

David Douillet: I would have loved it. If I had fought against him, I would have had a lot of fun and so would he. It would have been a fairly physical fight, at the beginning.

We would have worn ourselves out physically for two minutes, and then the tactics would have done the rest.

Between them, Teddy Riner and David Douillet now have no fewer than five individual Olympic gold medals.

It is therefore difficult to designate the winner in a possible fight against each other, including for the retired judoka.