“We already have 154,000 tickets sold. We broke our 2019 record, which is our benchmark year”said Sunday October 30 on franceinfo Cédric Pioline, former French tennis player and director of the Masters 1000 of Paris, which begins Monday October 31 in Bercy.
franceinfo: This is your first Paris-Bercy as director. How does that feel to you?
Cedric Pioline: It’s a lot of excitement, a great pride to be in this role. All of this comes with the responsibility to make the event run as smoothly as possible. We have excellent assets, whether in ticket sales or in the density of the table. It’s good to have a boiling public, very present. We already have 154,000 tickets sold. We broke our 2019 record, which is our benchmark year. We think it’s a popular success, access to tennis for all. There are a lot of stakes and excitement for this Masters.
Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokivic, Rafael Nadal… The best players in the world are present. In recent years, the favorites have sometimes forfeited. Do you have any fears?
We always knock on wood. In this function, there is always a little stress, we wonder if we are going to have bad news that will come on waking. Fortunately, this does not happen often. We have an incredible table and we wonder who will succeed Novak Djokovic who has the record of victories here.
This tournament marks the end of a generation for French tennis, with the farewell of Gilles Simon. What is planned for his last match against Andy Murray?
The draw has made it a prestigious opponent. It is a privilege for him to have been able to choose the place and time at which he could bow out. We would like to pay tribute to him as it should. He is one of the great French champions and he deserves to have a special ceremony, a bit like what Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had.
Can we speak of a declining French generation in tennis? How do you explain that ?
More than a generation in decline, I would rather say that it is a generation that is stopping and has had its day. Richard Gasquet no longer has the same brilliance as a few years ago, we want to see the young people but it takes time to build up and reach the national level. We hope that, very quickly, we will have names, which today are unknown to the general public, and which will become the French actors of the next few years.
Spectators will be able to discover a fresco of the Tennis Federation on ecology. What commitments have you made?
This is a subject that concerns us. There are a lot of actions that are put in place. We work with Accord Arena in terms of energy sobriety, we have set up a bike park not far away… We carry out a lot of actions that allow us to be responsible. We are very aware of the issues.