Hugo Barrette is not at the Nations Cup in Milton, Ontario this weekend. In fact, he hasn’t been anywhere since the start of 2022, a situation that annoys head coach Franck Durivaux.
I heard nothing from Hugo. I left him a few messages, on several platformshe said on the side of the track at Mattamy National Cycling Center.
Barrette asked Durivaux to take a break to participate in the reality show Big Brother: Celebrities, at the beginning of the year, which the coach accepted, because of the schedule it allowed. But it has been silence on the radio ever since.
When he left Kuya, we hoped we would see some news from him. (…) Under the season calendar, I thought it was entirely possible (for him to participate). So I gave him permission to go there, thinking that then he would come back to prepare for the season with the team.
It went well for us at the end of the season, especially in Cali and at the World Championships, in Roubaix, so that gave us a glimpse into the good things. But we had no news: no reply, no message, no text message, nothing.
Without closing the door on Barrette’s return to the troops, we feel that Durivaux will have some conditions to which the cyclist from the Magdalen Islands will have to comply.
It depends on how it goes. We welcomed him in 2020 after his fall and after he decided to work with other people. I was clear at the time: I needed to know what he was doing; I am not responsible for results that I do not care about. I don’t know what he looks like on a bike today.
It’s so simple now: no news, I do nothing. This is the way I work. I can’t wait for an athlete: we have to keep going. The athletes who are here, they are young, they are hungry, their performance is good. So I work with people who are motivated and want to go far.
Source: Radio-Canada
