Yannick Borel
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| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Born |
5 November 1988 Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe |
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| Weapon(s) | épée | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hand | right-handed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 1.96 m (6 ft 5 in) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 94 kg (207 lb) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| National coach(es) | Hugues Obry | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Levallois Sporting Club | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| FIE Ranking | current ranking | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Yannick Borel (born 5 November 1988) is a French épée fencer, team European champion and team World champion in 2011. He competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics, posting France's best result in men's épée.
Borel was born in Guadeloupe, overseas France. When he had to choose an extracurricular activity at the age of ten, he hesitated between fencing and gwo ka, a genre of Guadeloupe folk music. He chose the former because the club was close to his school and several of his friends already fenced. Five-time Olympic medallist Laura Flessel, also from Guadeloupe, was also a major inspiration for him. He learnt épée under coaches Rudy Plicoste and Barbara Paulin.
At the age of fifteen he was noticed by France's head coach Jérôme Roussat, who offered him a spot at the national junior training centre in Reims, Metropolitan France. Borel's parents refused, because they wanted him to finish high school before focussing on sport. He was allowed to go after he obtained his baccalauréat in 2007 and began training with the best junior fencers alongside to his physical therapy studies. That year he was selected into the French national junior team that won a silver medal at the Junior European Championships in Prague. The next season he earned a silver medal at the Herakled Cup in Budapest and won the Uhlmann Cup in Laupheim, two events of the Junior World Cup. He also became junior national champion.
In 2009 Borel gave up his physical therapy studies, which were too demanding for a high-performance athlete, and switched to physical education at INSEP, where he trained with the senior national team. He took part in the 2009 Summer Universiade, but did not earn any medal. Two quarter-finals finishes in the 2010–11 season had him selected into the senior national team for the first time. At the 2011 European Championships in Sheffield he reached the table of 16, defeating 2010 World silver medallist and teammate Gauthier Grumier along the way, but he yielded to Germany's Jörg Fiedler and finished 11th. In the team event France saw off Switzerland, Ukraine and finally Hungary to earn a gold medal.
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