Alain Schmitt and Margaux Pinot met in court this Friday, April 8, 2022, at the Paris Court of Appeal. The 38-year-old judo coach was on trial for domestic violence accused by Olympic champion Margaux Pinot, also his ex-girlfriend.
On the night of November 28, 2021, the two athletes had a violent altercation in a Blanc-Mesnil apartment (Seine-Saint-Denis). Alain Schmitt was preparing to leave for Israel to train the women’s team and leave Margaux Pinot with whom he had been living a complicated story for four years. After the arrest of the trainer and his placement in police custody, the case was quickly judged late at night in an immediate appearance in the court of Bobigny. Alain Schmitt had then benefited from a release and Margaux Pinot had revealed the extent of his injuries on social networks, in protest.
“As sensitive as the subject of domestic violence is, it cannot lead to a presumption of guilt which is not provided for by law.“, considered the court of Bobigny in its judgment of November 30 consulted by AFP, considering the evidence insufficient to convict Alain Schmitt. Because, according to the judges of first instance, “the objective elements, as well as the lesions observed on one and the other, the traces of struggle observed in the apartment” indeed accredit both the story of Margaux Pinot and that of the defendant. The prosecution, which had requested a conviction, appealed.
For days, the ex-lovers had repeated the trial multiple times by press conferences and TV sets interposed. Sports and political personalities, such as Teddy Riner or Roxana Maracineanu, had publicly supported the 27-year-old young woman, gold medalist at the last Olympic Games with the mixed French team and suddenly propelled into an emblematic victim of unpunished domestic violence.
However, in this case, the two protagonists, who each had multiple bruises, offer with the same aplomb totally contradictory versions of the events of the night of November 28, 2021.
Margaux Pinot allegedly told her that she had been raped by another judoka
Present at the Paris Court of Appeal, a journalist from BFMTV debriefed what happened there, what was said there. We learn that Alain Schmitt and Margaux Pinot were civil unions at the time of their violent altercation which led to several days of ITT (temporary incapacity for work) on the side of the two athletes. “When the police arrive at 2:30 a.m., Alain Schmitt is in a VTC. He looks panicked. He has a haggard look. It smells strongly of alcohol“, reports the BFMTV journalist, following the report. The president of the court of appeal quickly establishes a fact: there were no witnesses to their altercation.
After having immersed herself in the file, the president called on Alain Schmitt to speak. He once again recounted his version of the evening, denying having hit his ex-girlfriend: “I leave the room. She stays in bed. Then she gets up and asks me what I’m doing. I tell him I’m leaving. She goes back to bed. I go back and say to him: ”Still Margaux, I say goodbye to you’‘. Alain Schmitt is also questioned on a personal subject, a rape allegedly invented by Margaux Pinot. “The president asks him about an episode that occurred a little before. Margaux Pinot allegedly told her that she had been raped by another judoka in Lille. Before telling her that she had made it all up. He confirms on the stand that she told him that“, reports the journalist of BFMTV.