French Secret to Success

[Dejon Hamann]

From visionflyfishing.com :

THE FRENCH FLY FISHING TEAM SECRET BY:
Saïd Yahiaoui / French fly fishing team manger
Pascal Cognard / French fly fishing team captain

Many people ask us about the French fly fishing team secret. 7 world titles (gold medals) in 11 years and 3 times on the podium (2 silver and 1 bronze medal)and I always give the same answer: there is no secret; only three good reasons which work together:

1. First of all 6 very good competitors, chosen after a very high quality french championship and a system of classification regarding trhee years results.In addition, a very hard weekend of selection with the ten best competitors on rivers and the ten best on reservoirs.

2. The second reason is that French fly fishing is directed by a genius captain, Jacques BOYKO, the only frenchman who has all the titles since 11 years. And he always says that you cannot be a good captain if you are also competitor.

3. The last reason, but probably the more original is that we always favor team results on individual results. It seems that everything, on practice and competition, is done for all the team including the reserve and the manager. Team spirit is probably the secret of the French team. Jiri KLIMA and other genius captain of Czech team have understood that very quickly and he managed the last 5 or 6 world championships for making the team win. And the results are here. It is now the most dangerous team in every world championship for the French team.

And if the results are not so good for French team in European championships it is because the French federation has chosen to engage a B team on this competition which is very hard because the best teams in the world are in Europe. But it is also to have 12 competitors each year who participate to an international competition. And the target is to prepare new competitors to come in the A Team with a good experience of international championship.
All this already works!
With the team results, individual results have been also reached for Pascal COGNARD (3 times world champion), Jérôme BROSSUTTI (world champion in 2002) and Bertrand JACQUEMIN (world champion in 2005)And we don't speak about all individual podiums during these eleven years.

Saïd YAHIAOUI
French fly fishing team manger