The Flandrin-Horvais tandem, retrospective and future

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As we announced last week on our website, Olivier Flandrin and Loïc Horvais will not be taking over the management of the men’s U24 team. We contacted the now ex-national coaches to review their time running the U24M and also to talk about their future. 

The last two years have been difficult for everyone, especially the athletes. There was a constant confusion about what could and could not be done. Postponements, cancellations, underwater hockey has been on a forced break. During this two-year period the sport did not grow much, but the players did. « After Sheffield we had a nice group and we were very disappointed that they couldn’t make a U25 championship » regrets Olivier. The next youth world championships will not take place until 2024, in Turkey, five years after the previous ones. Only two players from the U24s present in Sheffield could participate. A new start that the two coaches did not see themselves taking. « After Sheffield, we said we would go to the 2022 World Youth Championships, but with the age changes and the prospect of starting from scratch, it became complicated, » say the two men.

After six years coaching the U24M squad, the two men have agreed to stop. If Olivier does not yet know what his future will be, for Loïc Horvais, aka « Louloute« , his story with the French National team seems to be over. This monument of French underwater hockey has been playing at international level for more than 20 years. Elite World Champion in 2008 and Masters in 2018, he is one of the few who can boast of having won world medals as a player and also as a coach (2017). It is as a coach, at the Hobart World Championships, which finished in second place, that he and Olivier have their most memorable moments.

While the French team finished third in the Round Robin behind Turkey and New Zealand, they managed, after a close match, to beat South Africa in the 1⁄4 final. This means that Les Bleus will play against New Zealand, who had beaten them in the Round Robin, in the semi-finals. The rest is history, and Loïc Horvais will tell us about it.

« After the 1⁄4 final we were tired, whether it was physically or mentally, the players as well as the coaches. On the other side, you have the New Zealanders coming with confidence because they beat us in the Round Robin.
In the middle of the day, Maxime Piaser (captain) and Nicolas Grandamas asked to see us. We agreed and they said « We’ve got something ». I remember word for word what was said afterwards. We were in the room, they presented us with the tactics, we validated them and they presented it to the players. We validated the system but we told them clearly that if they wanted that, they had to stick to it until the end. We spent a good hour in a park doing dry warm-ups, saying to ourselves that we had to do it like that and that if they did that, we had to do that. The player/coach relationship was amazing and in the end it worked, we beat them.
I, who had played at Elite level, had not seen this little trick, the players brought it, it was superb.« 

It is with the feeling of duty accomplished that Loïc Horvais now wants to enjoy his family and have fun with his club in Fontenay. However, if he is « teased« , the door to the Masters could well be reopened. « There’s always a taste for competition and the international scene, but for the moment I don’t feel like it. »

The 1998 world champion Michel Balster and the 1997 European champion Hélène Fauqueux are going to need a lot of enthusiasm to succeed Loïc and Olivier, as announced this morning on the Facebook account of Hockey Subaquatique Bretagne & Pays de la Loire and confirmed by our informations. Underwater hockey is entering a new era. It remains to be seen what it will be made of.

And you, what will you remember from the six years of coaching Loïc and Olivier at the head of the U24 ? Players, coaches, spectators, you have the floor !