Four Medals, No Title — the strange year of the Bleues

There is an old saying at my club: second place is the first loser. We say it with a smile, usually, because at the club nobody keeps score for long. But this year, watching the French women come home from the European championships, I stopped smiling.

Four medals in 2026. Zero titles. Read that again. Four times on the podium, four times watching somebody else lift the trophy.

It started in Lorca, Spain, earlier in the year. Aurélie Bories fought her way to the individual final and lost it to Sweden’s Jessica Johansson. Silver. In doubles, Bories and Charlotte Darodes took bronze, beaten in the semi-final by Switzerland — after leading 6-0. Six to nothing. Then the mène turned, and it was over.

That is the kind of loss that follows you home.

Last week it was Loutraki, for the senior women. The triplette — Nelly Peyré, Sandrine Poinsot, Toréa Tairio, Nadège Baussian-Protat — reached the final against Belgium. They trailed 0-6, then clawed back point by point until it was 13-11. So close you could taste it. Belgium took the game, and with it a second European title.

In precision shooting, Nelly Peyré added a bronze, losing her semi-final to Norway’s Ranu Homniam.

The French press has a phrase for this season: “souvent placées, jamais gagnantes.” Often placed, never winning. It is cruel and it is accurate, and it lands like a boule on your toes.

Here is what I keep turning over in my head at the boulodrome. In pétanque, losing 13-11 in a final after trailing 0-6 is not a failure of nerve. It is the opposite. These women did not collapse. They came back. The comeback fell one mène short. That is not a character flaw. That is the game.

Pétanque is the only sport I know where a 6-0 lead can evaporate in twenty minutes. The cochonnet moves. The terrain changes. A tireur finds her rhythm and suddenly the board flips. Losing after leading 6-0, as the doubles pair did against Switzerland, is not carelessness. It is the sport telling you it does not owe you anything.

We forget that at the club level, where we play the same ten guys every Thursday and everyone knows everyone else’s weaknesses. At the European level, the margin is nothing. A millimetre on the pointeur’s last boule. A carreau that misses by a hair. That is the difference between gold and silver, and it has nothing to do with desire.

And yet. Four finals and semi-finals, four losses. At some point you have to ask the uncomfortable question: what is missing? Not talent — the talent is obvious. Not courage — the Loutraki comeback proved that. Something smaller. The last point. The killer mène. The habit of winning.

The Belgians have it now. Two European titles. They did not play better pétanque than the French women all week. They played the final better. That is a different skill, and it is the one that counts.

I have lost plenty of finals at my club. The 13-12 kind, where you shake hands and say “next time” and mean it, and then you go home and replay the last mène in your head for a week. Multiply that by a national shirt and a plane ticket home, and you get something like what these women are carrying.

So here is my aphorism for the year, and you can have it for free: medals are for the cabinet. Titles are for the memory. France has filled its cabinet in 2026. The memory will have to wait.

Next time, mesdames. Next time.