Playing at home as the defending champions and having won the Volleyball Nations League 2024 less than a month earlier, France entered the men’s volleyball tournament of the Paris 2024 Games as one of the main favorites to win gold, but it wasn’t obvious to see that outcome throughout the first half of the team’s campaign at the Olympics.
The French had an early scare in their opening match, being pushed to five sets by Serbia, responded well with a sweep of Canada and eventually fell to rookies Slovenia in another tie-breaker to advance to the quarterfinals with mixed results.
In their first elimination match at the South Paris Arena 1, they faced Germany and saw elimination very close after they dropped the first two sets of their quarterfinal matchup. That’s when the confidence of a team that had been there, done that made the difference as the French were capable of pushing through adversity to win in the tie-breaker and advance to the medal rounds.
“We were ready for a tie-breaker, we expected it,” star outside hitter Earvin Ngapeth, the MVP of the Paris 2024 Games, reflected after that match. “That's why we didn't panic after being down 2-0. We didn't even feel like we were being dominated.”
