Christophe Massina – Twenty Years Later

07/03/2025

Born on 11 January 1974 in Chambray-les-Tours (France), Christophe Massina has been one of the most prominent coaches in the French judo team for two decades. In his previous life, he was also a European and world junior champion, a two-time French senior champion in the U73kg category in the days of Christophe Gagliano, Ferrid Kheder and Dany Fernandes, and a five-time medallist at the Paris tournament between 1997 and 2002. After switching sides, the man in the half-open tracksuit jacket coached the French women’s team from 2004 to 2009, the French junior women’s team from 2009 to 2012, the French women’s team from 2012 to 2016, the French men’s team from 2017 to 2021 before being named head coach of the French women’s team until the summer of 2024, in the aftermath of the glorious Larbi Benboudaoud years. Sitting in the coach’s chair for Emilie Andéol’s Olympic triumph in 2016, Axel Clerget’s world medals in 2018 and 2019, and the mixed team Olympic double on 3 August 2024 in Paris, he looks back to the epilogue with its many lessons of around seven thousand three hundred days at the forefront. – JudoAKD#032.

A French version of this article is available here.

The core of the French women’s team for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, from top to bottom and from left to right: Madeleine Malonga, Marie-Ève Gahié, Amandine Buchard, Shirine Boukli, Clarisse Agbegnenou, Romane Dicko, Séverine Vandenhende, Sarah-Léonie Cysique, Ludovic Delacotte and Christophe Massina ©Archives C. Massina/JudoAKD

Today is 26 September 2024, exactly two months after the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, which was also your last competition as the manager of the French women’s judo team. Where are you now?
I’ve really moved on. No staff has been appointed yet, so for the moment I’m continuing to run the Insep, ‘managing the day-to-day business’ as we’ve been asked to do until a new staff is appointed for the next Olympics. So I’m working on my future projects while we wait for things to move forward.

And how do you feel after these Olympics, which have been the focus for so many years?
I feel great. I’m completely aligned with who I am. We have really finished this Olympic adventure with the athletes – not with all of them, because I haven’t met all the girls yet. Some are reserved, whether they were at the Games or not. In any case, I’m trying to close this chapter and talk to each of them.

Do you already know where you are going after or is it still unclear?
At the moment I’ve got one project in mind. My plan is to stay with the Federation and, above all, to pass on my twenty years of experience at the highest level and to formalise this transfer to all the coaches who work for the Federation, the clubs and the athletes. It’s quite clear in my mind. Now the Federation has to accept this project, which doesn’t exist yet and is quite innovative.

What’s it like for a coach to be back home the day after the Games, especially when you are the one in charge of the women’s team?
I wouldn’t say it’s ambiguous, because deep down I’ve come full circle. Of course, this time it’s even more special because we’ve achieved something extraordinary. Judo has won ten medals, including this second consecutive Olympic mixed team title. It’s obviously a very powerful thing and I can say that I enjoyed it until the end.

What do you mean by that?
In other words, I really decided to stay for the second week of the Olympic Games, to be ‘fully Olympic’ and to support the other French teams. It was really something extraordinary to be able to experience that. It’s been an incredible Olympic Games – on a personal level also, because I was chosen to take part in the coaches’ Oath and I thought that was absolutely crazy. It’s also great recognition. In fact, that’s what Tony Estanguet told me when he called me a week before: ‘I think what you’re doing with the French women’s team is exceptional and I want to show you off’. I was obviously delighted, especially as I was retiring afterwards. I thought it was a great gift. And it allowed me to enjoy the Games to the full.

How long does it take to land – and did you land, by the way?
I landed quite quickly. I took the opportunity to stay for two weeks and make the most of it. I went to the closing ceremony. I wanted to bring the whole journey to a close. It was like a rite of passage. Afterwards, I wanted to enjoy my family, because they have also taken a lot out of these three years, and even these twenty years [laughs]. The day after the Closing Ceremony I left for Norway, where I went from having thousands of people around me to having nobody. It was really great to have done that with a holiday and some extraordinary scenery. That was really important for me. It helped me to move on, even though I still talk about it and I still get stars in my eyes when I talk about it.

*In Paris on 26 July 2024, alongside Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. ©Archives Christophe Massina/JudoAKD*

You who have points of comparison with other Olympics, did the fact that it was at home give it a different flavour?
Of course it did. These Games were also special because they were at home. I’ve been involved with the Games since 2004, first as an assistant coach or support staff in 2004, 2008 and 2012, and then as a head coach since 2016. So I really have a point of comparison and there hasn’t been a single wrong note at these Olympic Games. The organisation has been incredible, from the Opening Ceremony to the Village, the competition organisation, the fans, the volunteers… I really think there will be a before and an after Paris. From a purely judo point of view, it was a really enriching experience, especially as these three years have not been easy at all.

Why was that?
First of all, there were huge expectations for this team. Then, on a human level, there were selection decisions to be made. And it has not been easy to manage this multi-medal winning team with a wealth of experience at the highest level. There have been ups and downs, and there have been personal issues over the last three years that haven’t always been easy to deal with.

Two months on, which feeling dominates: pride at seeing five of your seven athletes take home individual medals? Or the frustration that some of them didn’t get the gold medal they deserved? Or that team apotheosis where you must have aged ten years in an hour?
What dominates is the pride in the individual results of the women’s team. The ambition was to achieve something historic. This team had that ambition and so did each individual. Everyone had the potential to bring home a medal. Of course it’s frustrating not to have a gold medal, but when I look at the other women’s teams, no other team has more than two medals, and we have five… Of course, there will always be the frustration of having failed in the four semi-finals we had, but what I explained to the girls was that in the history of French women’s judo, only six athletes have ever won a double Olympic medal. One of those six is Clarisse Agbegnenou, who has three. And in terms of double medallists, there was Lucie Décosse, there was Audrey Tcheuméo and the other four are the ones who were in Paris: Clarisse, but also Amandine Buchard, Sarah-Léonie Cysique and Romane Dicko. For me, it’s a fantastic achievement, especially as the two Olympic Games went by so quickly, without a real break. It was the Paris Games and everyone wanted to shine at the end of a difficult olympiad in terms of maintaining motivation and training.

A source of overall pride, then.
So yes, pride in having achieved this. Pride in this Olympics, in bringing home fourteen medals from three World Championships, including three titles. These five bronze medals, even if there’s no final, even if there’s no title, it’s a source of pride to have got this team through. It shows that this team was physically ready, even if there were inevitably a few things that went wrong in those four semi-finals and in the fact that we ‘only’ won four bronze medals. But on the other hand, they were there for every bronze medal match. We could have ended up with fewer gold medals, but when it came down to it, they all took the medal. So that’s something to be proud of, yes. It’s a strength of this team, although I’ll always be a little bitter that I didn’t manage to get seven individual medals from the seven athletes who all had the potential.
Over and above my own results, I’m proud of them. Very proud of them. Because it was complicated. If it wasn’t in Paris, the pressure would be a lot less. What we have experienced is something we have never experienced before and I think we will never experience again.

What role did the crowd play this time, given that the Tokyo Olympics were held behind closed doors because of the pandemic?
The public allowed the men to transcend themselves and, paradoxically, I think it put a damper on some of the girls who weren’t able to express their full potential.

What do you mean by that?
Actually, it’s something we maybe didn’t anticipate well enough, just like we didn’t anticipate, even though we obviously wanted to, that winning four medals in four days would put pressure on the other three. Looking back, I didn’t imagine that. And I felt it. When Clarisse doesn’t win but brings home a medal, it puts extra pressure on the others because 1) they’re all medallists, but 2) Clarisse isn’t a gold medallist.

And then there’s the success of the French men…
The success of the boys has been great. For some time now, either the boys or the girls have been doing well. It’s very rare for both to succeed at the same time, with this apotheosis of mixed teams where somewhere two out of three girls fail and it’s the boys who get the point, with Teddy putting the finishing touches on it. So yes, I’m ten years older now, but when I watch the tapes again, I can see myself concentrating really hard, even when Joan wins against Abe, I’m completely in the game. It’s an incredible experience.

Especially as you’d been on deck together for several weeks before the climax of this mixed team final…
It was a human adventure. We also created something with these girls… Of course there was disappointment for those who didn’t make it. But there was also the briefing before arriving in the Olympic village, which we had carefully prepared with our colleagues. It was a very emotional moment, perhaps one of the best moments of my career. I can’t remember ever experiencing anything as powerful as that briefing just before arriving at the Village. It was crazy.

Would it be indiscreet of me to ask what you focused on at this point in your preparation? Emotional? Patriotic? Spiritual? Historical?
Well, as far as the briefing is concerned, before we arrived at the Olympic Village, we were actually thinking with our colleagues about how we could really, I would say, use the emotions, or rather relieve them for the girls. Because we know that, anyway, we noticed that as the year went on, the pressure was getting greater and greater. So we really wanted to find a way for them to relieve some of that tension, to use the emotional side of their loved ones to give them a little extra breathing space. So in the beginning we thought we’d just make a video where their loved ones would give them a little message. And then, as we went along, we came up with the idea of combining that with something quite funny, with the idea of highlighting both the emotion of the loved ones and the emotion of this rather solemn moment. We really emphasised the emotional aspect and also the history of this team, our history as coaches, the fact that this was my last competition with them and what we went through with Ludovic Delacotte and Séverine Vandenhende. We really tried to open up. So afterwards it’s still quite… well, quite discreet, so I don’t want to tell you everything, but basically we made a fifteen to twenty minute video and it was quite powerful. It was a very emotional and sharing moment.

I’d like to go back to what you said, in particular the fact that after four medals in four days, and without Clarisse’s ‘usual’ title, the last three may have felt a little extra pressure. Do you think the fact that you were chosen to give the coach’s Oath also added to the sense of XXL solemnity that the athletes may have felt? Was the same true of Japan’s more subdued performance than usual in the early days (two individual titles at the end compared to nine in Tokyo)?
As for me taking the coach’s Oath, I don’t think it put any extra pressure on the athletes. But the four medals in four days, yes, I really felt that. I was in the Village for the semi-finals and Clarisse’s third place, with Shirine Boukli, who had already gone through, and then Marie-Ève Gahié, Madeleine Malonga and Romane Dicko. And that’s how I felt, that there were four medals for four French women, but that Clarisse didn’t have the gold this time. And I really felt that those four out of four, for those who were left, gave them the feeling of ‘Fuck it, if I mess up, I might be the only one not to get a medal’.

Wasn’t that the stated goal for everyone to win a medal?
In fact, the seven medal target was starting to take on real meaning, and I think it really put extra pressure on those who hadn’t entered the competition yet, and that’s something I hadn’t anticipated. Add to that the surprise defeat of Uta Abe and Clarisse and I think it all played a part in the fact that if some of the top players lose, then other top players can lose too. And they are the leaders here. So that added a little bit to the feeling of not messing up. That’s how I felt.

*Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 12 August 2016. Twenty-eight-year-old Emilie Andéol defeated Cuban titleholder Idalys Ortiz in the final to win the Olympic O78kg title ©Paco Lozano/JudoAKD*

During your career, and especially in the last three Olympic Games, you’ve had to coach very different profiles, both girls and boys. But are there any invariables, things you should (not) say or should (not) do that are the same from one athlete to the next and that you’ve learnt from experience to always include in your coaching, both on a day-to-day basis and on D-day? What’s the right distance between you and an Emilie Andéol, an Axel Clerget or an Amandine Buchard, to give a few concrete examples?
When it comes to supporting athletes, there’s one thing that’s invariable and that is, from my point of view, trying to take the individual into account as much as possible. It’s more than just a way of coaching. That’s why it’s not quite the same when you’re supporting an Emilie, an Axel or an Amandine. That said, I always try to be as close as possible to the athlete and to my convictions. My convictions as a coach, as a man with a capital M, and also as a coach, because for me the most important thing is to make the athlete feel as fulfilled as possible, because that’s not easy in our hyper-competitive, high-performance environment. These are really tough times anyway. Even though we are experiencing extraordinary things, we are also under a lot of pressure. If there’s one constant, it’s this: trying to bring the athlete back to his humanity as much as possible.

Interesting…
Top-level sport tends to put athletes in robotic conditions. In a way, the athlete exists only through his performance. The idea is always to bring back the fact that whether there’s a performance or not, that’s not what determines a person’s value. That’s why I’ve always tried to support athletes by taking into account their personal characteristics.

Many people remember how you managed to get the best out of Emilie Andéol’s hyper-emotionality when she won the Olympic title in the O78kg category in Rio 2016…
Emilie’s characteristic was indeed her emotionality. The challenge was to keep this emotionality and turn it into a strength, not only in judo but also in other areas. It wasn’t necessarily easy to channel. We had to manage to keep that part of her while showing her that it could sometimes play tricks on her. For Amandine, on the other hand, it’s important to accentuate her opportunism, because it allows her to be herself… So that’s it, it’s about supporting the athlete and making sure that she can be herself in that support, which isn’t necessarily easy.

You mention a very intense olympiad, with choices that had to be made internally and that sometimes affected the harmony of the group (I am thinking, for example, of the unhappiness expressed on social networks by Blandine Pont, Julia Tolofua or Audrey Tcheuméo). If such outbursts are also a sign of the fighting spirit of these athletes, how can we avoid such reactions in the future, which damage the group at a time when it needs to be united? I know it was even harder in the past. For example, have you observed any practices in other countries or in other sports from which French judo could draw some inspiration?
It was indeed a very intense olympiad. Three years instead of four gives you a constant sense of urgency. The intensity also comes from the fact that there are choices to be made in the Olympic team and these choices inevitably shake the athletes. When you make a choice, an athlete can feel unloved. But that’s obviously not the case. The choice is not about liking or not liking. The decision is made by trying to be as objective and fair as possible.

Doesn’t being both a coach and a member of the selection panel mean that you implicitly accept the idea that unanimity is impossible?
It’s true that being a coach and a member of the selection panel is complicated. It’s complicated because you’re very close to the athletes – in any case, in the way I support and coach, I try to be as close to the athletes as possible, but at the same time keep a certain distance. But as a result, they can be treated badly and they don’t understand that I can be 200% with them in training, making sure they are the best, knowing that when it comes to selection, I’m wearing another hat, the most objective one possible, which tries to take into account not only the athletes I’m coaching, but the French team as a whole. So that can be very difficult to accept and, as you say, yes, it can mean that it’s impossible to be unanimous. And it’s actually quite inhuman. It means that when I’m a selector, I might be a bit more like a robot.

Is it hard?
It is hard, yes. These decisions are very, very hard because they can damage not only the individuals, the athletes, but also the group, because obviously if a Julia, an Audrey or a Blandine, who are close to a lot of the girls in the team, if these girls are affected, it affects the whole group… And to go back to your question about social networking, yes, I don’t think it’s good. It doesn’t show the values of our sport. It shows suffering – which is real, I don’t deny that – because it’s also a way for them to exorcise that suffering, because when you’re not selected for your home Olympics, it’s obviously very, very hard… After that, I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the point where those who aren’t chosen don’t hate those who are… Now there’s an example that I like very much, and that’s what BMX has done, for example.

Tell me about it…
They’ve never managed to win an Olympic medal because they have always been in competition with each other, and so when it comes to the Olympic medal they’ve fallen behind, even though they’re always among the winners at the World Championships. At the Games, they push each other to be the best and, as a result, none of them wins a medal – at least that’s what happened at the Tokyo Games. But now, in Paris, they realize that their collective performance could one day enable them to win an Olympic medal, or even an Olympic title, and they finally succeed. Of course, they were selected, so they had their chance – when you’re not, you don’t really care if the other guy gets a medal. What I mean by that is that we’re moving towards a more collective mindset, as opposed to the previous mindset, which was more individualistic, and that’s what I find increasingly unfortunate in our social system. We emphasize individualism, but I’m still convinced that the collective dynamic makes us even stronger.

Can BMX be a source of inspiration for judo?
I don’t know if we can take inspiration from a sport like BMX, but there are things to think about here, how to prevent all these outbursts on social networks. Audrey’s outburst a few days before the start of the competition hurt, so it’s a pity. It’s a pity but it’s also human, so it’s complicated.

*Coaching, the only place to launch* o-uchi-gari *with the arms (here on 3 August 2024 in the semi-final against Italy in the Olympic mixed team event). ©Paco Lozano/JudoAKD*

I know from talking to you one evening on the bus during a Masters in Qatar that you’re interested in many other sports – you mentioned reading the excellent magazine Sport et Vie – and that you’ve even trained in hypnosis. How have these different interests gradually been integrated into your coaching approach?
I try to be as open as possible to other sports, but also to other approaches to training, to other ways of communicating, to other possibilities. I really try to keep that openness. It also allows me to filter things. Sometimes when you train in something, you get the impression that it’s a panacea, but it’s just an additional tool. Anyway, when I trained in hypnosis it was with that perspective, to develop another means of communication, not necessarily to practice hypnosis for hypnosis’s sake. I’ve always tried to broaden my horizons so that I don’t get stuck, so that I don’t fall into a kind of training routine where you repeat the same thing endlessly. I’ve always tried to look a little further afield to see how the sport and coaching practices are evolving and, on a personal level, to try not to stagnate. To keep that constant motivation to learn new things. That’s also why I try to have a fairly close relationship with the athletes, while always maintaining the distance that a coach must maintain. I’ve always tried to have that proximity in order to keep learning because, you know, athletes also teach you things. You don’t stop learning just because you’ve been a coach for twenty years. The moment you think that, you’re done.

It’s a form of continuous learning…
Yes, and in this sense I’ve always tried to train myself, to reflect on my practices, on how I do things, why I do them, when I do them, what made me react in a certain way at a certain moment… So I’ve always tried to question myself about these things and then, when I couldn’t question myself, I made sure to surround myself with people who would question me about my practice, about why I choose certain training systems or exercises, and so on. I’ve always tried to surround myself with people like that. So yes, it has nourished my approach to training.

Do you have any particular people in mind?
When I started at national level, someone like Gilbert Avanzini was doing performance support at INSEP. I got to know him and went to see him regularly to discuss the training systems and exercises I was proposing to the athletes. Always with the idea of evolving, not doing things mechanically. Why are you doing this? What does it bring? All of this feeds into reflection, the way you look at things. It also fosters a kind of perspective and distance that I think is essential in the coaching profession. Because clearly and again, if you keep your head down and don’t step back to see what’s happening, you’re done.

*Olympic Games in Tokyo, alongside Axel Clerget, two-time world medallist in the U90kg category. ©Archives Dany Fernandes/JudoAKD*

Here we are in February 2025. The international circuit has been running again since the autumn. For the first time since 2004, you’re not in charge of a national team. Six months have passed since the Games. How does it feel: a sense of emptiness? Relief? Worry? A desire to get back into it?
Yes, it’s the first time in twenty years that I’m not training. And I’m actually coping very well with it. I’d say I’ve really moved on to other things, especially since it was my wish, a well-considered choice. I really closed that chapter of my life at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games.

You still had to overlap with the new staff, didn’t you?
Of course. I had to do the work between September and the arrival of the new staff, although I had already moved on to other things with a clear project in mind and a real desire to pass on my knowledge.

No desire to re-enlist?
Absolutely not. Although, yes, it did feel a bit strange when I arrived at the Paris Grand Slam with a guest accreditation and walked into the warm-up room. I thought it would be the first time in almost thirty years that I wouldn’t have anything to do at the Paris tournament, or at least I wouldn’t be working with the athletes. I’ve experienced it as a player and then as a coach, and it’s true that for almost thirty-five years I’ve been in the warm-up room for the Paris tournament. So when I arrived and greeted my colleagues, it was a bit strange.

The new staff was only officially announced in January. How did the handover with the new team go?
We met with Lucie Décosse, first of all to give her various documents that might interest her about the Games evaluation and the different seasons, how the girls had trained during the season and during the period when she was away, as She had moved away a year and a half before the Olympics. There was a good exchange with Lulu, a real transmission.

That’s a term you use a lot, transmission…
Yes, that’s really my idea. To transmit, to make sure that my twenty years of experience don’t go up in smoke, at least for those who want to listen – or, I would say, hear rather than listen, but hear where I can help them and where I can help them avoid mistakes that I may have made and that my predecessors may have made. That’s the idea anyway.

What’s next? Is a sequel in sight? Is coaching abroad something that would appeal to you? Or do you want to do something completely different?
I informed the Federation back in January 2024 that I did not want to continue my duties after the Games. And I was also thinking about a project specifically around this topic of transmission. Coaching abroad is not what I want at all, for the simple reason that it would feel very strange to me.

You see it as a form of loyalty to the French team, is that it?
Exactly. As a coach abroad, I think that after these twenty years of working for the French team, I cannot imagine working for another nation, or at least for a nation that could be a competitor. Maybe for a ‘small’ nation, to develop something, but not to coach them, to really develop a system. But not a nation that would actually be competing with France. Because that would feel too strange. I would really feel a sense of betrayal.

Hence your attachment to the idea of transmission…
Absolutely. In twenty years I still experienced a lot of staff changes, a lot of break-ups. And so I can’t really imagine making this break. I really want to pass on this experience and even formalise it… I’ll explain you a little bit about the content of my project.

What does it consist of?
It’s really this idea of leaving a mark and being able to move the system forward without dirtying my hands. My initial idea and the project itself is the creation of a ‘certification training’. It’s worth noting that the Federation first thought about a college for coaches more than thirty years ago. In reality, it was never really implemented, certainly because no one could ever ‘force’ themselves to look at how to create this training, what could be done for coaches so that at some point we could be even more effective and prepare coaches for high performance.

So that’s the niche you want to position yourself in?
Yes, it’s really about creating this school. I’m in the process of creating a masters or executive masters programme specifically for high performance management and coaching. It will of course be aimed at French coaches and judo, but I don’t want it to be something insular. I want it to be something very open, available to other federations and even to business leaders. The idea remains to train in a different vision of performance, both from a sporting point of view and from a business point of view. So it’s something that’s really close to my heart.

How do you intend to proceed?
I have set up a working group and my initial idea is not to work on technical-tactical aspects, which I think are fairly easy to achieve. My aim is to work on interpersonal skills and the positioning of coaches in crisis situations, in negotiation situations, how to work better with athletes, posture work, etc. I’m really in the construction phase with very high-level speakers who also haven’t necessarily experienced high-level judo, so that’s also something that’s important to me.
The other part of my job is coaching the coaches. Throughout my career I’ve been in contact with people who have really helped me to develop in my positioning but also in my way of coaching and that seems important to me to have someone like a coach but who is on the side, who questions, who is not directly involved in the performance, but with a step to the side, with experience, and so that’s the second part of my mission, which is to support the performance coaches. This goes from the Pôle Espoir and Pôle France coaches to the national coaches.

After the transition period, you don’t intervene at all with the new staff?
Yes, for now I’ve really decided to take a small step back from the national coaches. I want to give them space so that I do not interfere in their work. It’s really up to them to implement what they want. That’s why I’m concentrating so much on this certification and this training before moving on to the accompaniment page.
The last part, by the way, concerns both training and coaching, because it emphasizes the identification of new performance coaches. The aim is to try to save time and organise individual training to make them immediately effective.

What are these courses called?
Well, that will be the title, because obviously there has to be a title. It’s related to the training and my professional context. It will probably be ‘Director of the High Performance Training and Support Programme’.

*Between his brothers Thierry and Patrick and his first teacher Michel Munier during his sixth dan ceremony in January 2023. Archives Christophe Massina/JudoAKD*

As you were born in January, you’ve often celebrated your birthday at the international training camp in Mittersill, Austria, during the coaches’ dinner. What kind of bonds are formed between coaches from the same nation or even from competing nations through travelling together and crossing paths on the circuit? Are there some with whom you’ve developed a real affinity? Others with whom you’ve never been able to break the ice? And as a French coach, have you sometimes felt that you have a special status because of the prestige that French judo has built up through its results?
Yes, it’s true that I didn’t celebrate my birthday in Mittersill this year. Which wasn’t too bad, actually. But I wasn’t at home either, I was at a seminar with the technical staff. So as far as relationships with other coaches go, things are going pretty well. I’m still a member of the European Coaches’ Commission. It’s mainly around these coaches that a relationship could develop. Well, it remains a relationship in a professional context. It’s true that we haven’t managed to form « friendships ». I get on well with some of them, but that doesn’t mean that they come to my house for the holidays or that I go to their house for the holidays. It hasn’t worked that way. Still, I think I made more connections with the junior coaches when I was in charge of the juniors than I did with the senior coaches later on.

Why is that?
Maybe it’s because the stakes aren’t the same and we’re still a bit of a rivalry.

And with your French colleagues?
Among the French staff, there are of course colleagues who are friends. Daniel Fernandes was always a friend. Even when we were competitors, we were friends. He still is. Then, Ludovic Delacotte, we were club mates. We’ve followed each other for almost thirty, thirty-five years. There are some with whom you have more affinity than others, but there are friendships that develop with Franck Chambily, for example. We also developed a lot of closeness, a lot of links when I was one of the men’s coach, when we were both in charge of the juniors, he was with the men and I was with the women. So inevitably there are bonds, strong bonds that are formed and I would say that if they weren’t there, frankly, we work in a human field, if they weren’t there, it would be very complicated. In any case, I can’t imagine this profession without really strong bonds with colleagues, with whom you spend more time than with your family.
As for whether I have a special status in French judo? Yes, I think we are listened to, but also envied…

Which means?
We are somewhat the heads to be cut off. At the Games, the girls were clearly the team to beat. It has advantages and disadvantages because everyone is watching what happens in France and everyone is watching what you do and how you do it. We’re a bit used to that. We’re much more open to foreign coaches and other nations than we used to be, so it’s good for the relationships we can have with foreign colleagues.

What about Japan?
We have a very strong relationship with the Japanese coaches. We’ve really developed a very strong friendship, even though we’re competitors. With really, I think, a relationship of trust. After the Games, for example, we really met on the warm-up mat after the team events. We talked, we took two or three pictures, we exchanged a lot with them.

Winter 2024 with Katsuyuki Masuchi, Ludovic Delacotte, Atsuko Nakamura, Eric Buonomo, Séverine Vandenhende and Bastien Puget: an outing in Paris between Japanese and French staff. ©Archives Christophe Massina/JudoAKD

How have you managed to juggle high-level competition and family life over the years? I know this is challenging for many athletes and even more so for many coaches…
My wife was a judoka at Insep, so that helps. She knows very well, both from my time as an athlete and from my time as a coach, let’s say the sacrifices, in quotation marks, at least the impact it has on travelling. But what has also allowed us to balance all this is that my wife is extraordinary. And my children too, because it’s true that being a coach means being away from home for one hundred and fifty, one hundred and sixty days a year. Not for yourself, but for others. So you have to accept that, you have to understand that. So I’ve had many conversations with my children, who are now twenty-three and eighteen, and with my wife, and I’ve said that this is also part of my balance, to be able to do this job for the French team. What made it difficult was that it forced us to stay in the Paris region, and my wife really wanted to leave the Paris region. On the other hand, there is also the pride of my children in this job, in the results of the French teams, in the results that I have been able to achieve. And beyond the results, it was also to see how the athletes appreciated me and the work I did with them. That’s important too.

And how did you balance all that?
The main thing I balanced was the fact that when I’m at home, I’m at home. Which was more complicated during the Olympic build-up… When I’m at home, in any case, when I started coaching, I really tried to say that from the moment I walked through the door of the house, the work with the athletes stayed outside and I also made it clear to the athletes that I was their coach, let’s say from 9 o’clock in the morning until 7.30 p.m., and that after 7.30 p.m. I was at home with my family and then, except in case of emergency or force majeure, there was no connection to continue after training, which I think is also very important in the coach’s attitude and in the distance we can put with the athletes. So what has sometimes been complicated in my position as head coach is that sometimes, yes, there’s also administrative work, there’s also other things to manage sometimes on a political level, so the working hours are perhaps sometimes a little bit extended, but in any case, if I have to summarise it, it’s: first of all, my family, my wife and my children are extraordinary. I also come from a family of judokas, so everybody knows what that means. The other thing is that I really made a break. In any case, I really separated judo from home and with a real effort on my part, so that from the moment I came home, I was completely at home, I was completely with my family and I was no longer at work. So that was also a point that I think is very important to remember.

A friend once said to me when he was thirty-five: « If I had understood at twenty what I understand at thirty-five, I probably would have been an Olympic champion ». Having had so many athletes in your hands over the past two decades, has it made you realize that there are things you wish you had known or understood at their age that would have saved you time or even won championships, both as an athlete and as a coach?
It’s an interesting question. I tend to say that you don’t learn until you experience it. Of course, in terms of results, if I had known that, maybe it would have been easier to achieve my goals… I’m not convinced, you know. Without being philosophical, if my path was this, it’s because it had to be. And that has to do with the choices I was able to make, the life I had as a child, etc. So I have no regrets that I missed certain things. There are things I’ve been successful at, others less so, others not at all, and then I don’t want to live with the fact that because of this or that you have regrets. If you say to yourself « if I had known that, maybe I would have been successful », I don’t like that at all, I don’t like regrets at all. I think I’ve had an extraordinary career as an athlete and as a coach, I’ve experienced extraordinary things and that’s enough for me, in quotes. What I didn’t achieve, or the failures I may have had, I have analyzed and that has allowed me to develop as a coach and be one of those innovative coaches who have always questioned themselves. If I hadn’t had that, my coaching career might have been different. So I really don’t have any regrets about whether or not I spent more time on certain things. No, frankly, I’m at peace with that and I find that sometimes, by trying to save time, we end up losing it or losing something else.
There have been successes, there have been failures, I would say it has all made me the man I am today. It’s what made me the coach that I was. And then I will continue to succeed and fail, and then I will continue to evolve, to innovate, to try to find the best solutions, both in coaching coaches and in my personal life. No, frankly, I don’t have any regrets and I’m happy to be where I am.

You started judo at the age of six. If the Christophe of 2025 could give some life advice to the Christophe who made his first white belt at that time, what would he say?
What would I tell the Christophe who is just starting out in judo? I would tell him: don’t forget the joy it brings and don’t try to… No, I’d actually say: stay yourself, that’s it, stay yourself and keep that childlike joy of fighting from beginning to end, even when people try to make it more serious. That’s what I would say to Totof in 1980. I would say: there will be difficult moments, but keep that smile and those crazy things that make you who you are. That’s what I would say to him.
– Interview by Anthony Diao, Autumn 2024 – Winter 2025. Cover photo: ©Laëtitia Cabanne/JudoAKD.

A French version of this interview is available here.