The last French player to win a Grand Slam tournament, Yannick Noah left his mark on the generations that followed, as Cédric Pioline recently highlighted.
Yannick Noah was at La Défense Arena on Sunday for the final of the Rolex Paris Masters. The Frenchman had the distinct honor of presenting Jannick Sinner with the Tree of Fanti, the trophy awarded each year to the winner of the Paris tournament. The former winner of Roland-Garros could not refuse the invitation from Cédric Pioline, the director of the Rolex Paris Masters.
The two men have formed a special relationship over the years. At the end of his career, Cédric Pioline was Yannick Noah’s assistant for more than three seasons during his third stint at the head of the French Davis Cup team, with the Blues’ last victory in the event in 2017.
Recently invited to Ophélie Meunier’s microphone, Cédric Pioline said all the good things he thought of the man who became his
” friend “. “He’s a guide and over time we became friends, close,” he explained to begin with before returning to Yannick Noah’s coronation at Roland-Garros in 1983, the last of a French player in the Grand Slam.
“It was absolutely crazy”
“He’s ten years older than me but I looked at him like a kid, he continued. I was 14 when he won Roland-Garros and I was in a club in the Bois de Boulogne. It was so crazy that we could hear the clamors even though we must have been two kilometers from the Roland-Garros stadium. I imagine the wind was carrying a little, but we could hear the clamors reaching the club. It was absolutely crazy. »
“Then it was 1991 too, the victory against the United States in Lyon where on the court, afterwards, there was Saga Africa, La chenille, he also recalled, adding:
“You have Kleenex because you are going to make me cry with these memories, good memories. »
