For many athletes, Olympic gold is a Holy Grail that they all hope to have at least once in their life, but for Hugo Boucheron, this medal did not only have positive effects on his life. A true rowing phenomenon, the 29-year-old Frenchman has literally won everything in his career when he appears with his lifelong partner, Matthieu Androdias, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Twice world champion, he won the medal gold in double sculls, a vital objective for him, as he tells in the pages of the Parisian today. “Winning the Games was my ultimate dream. But when I tell you that, it really bothered me, it was addictive as can be. It made me super selfish. (…) I have become completely crazy, and in addition there was the Covid and its consequences. In fact, I dug my hole before the Olympics”he says.
Indeed, despite his Olympic title, Hugo Boucheron is not doing well at all and last March he gave up the French Championships on short boats due to a “little depression”, as he explained at the time. A depressive episode that begins in October 2021, just a few months after his Olympic title in Japan. “It gradually increased in intensity. I felt a disgust of everything, I wondered about a lot of subjects, and not only about sport. What you need to know is that everything happens in these cases, even questions about your own existence. It went as far as suicidal thoughts. That was during the hardest timein the middle of the seasoncontinues the rower.
It’s related to a lot of things. Not everything has to be rowing related
A terrible period for the young man from Lyon, who is still trying to get by. “I started to work with a mental trainer. We first took appointment with a psychiatrist to take stock of the situation and to get me out of the very, very dark”says Hugo Boucheron, before discussing the nature of this depression: “It’s linked to a lot of things. Not everything is necessarily related to rowing, but I’ll keep it to myself.”
Despite this difficult pass, the athlete came out of it perfectly and after being able to climb the slope, he became world champion in double sculls for the second time last weekend in the Czech Republic. “When I look back at my year and how it went… I pretty much hit rock bottom, we’ll say. To find this level for this competition, it was surprising”he concludes.