Having returned from Tokyo with the French volleyball team’s first Olympic medal, Laurent Tillie and his assistants, Arnaud Josserand and Thomas Bortolossi, led the French team to gold. For this historic title, the city of Cannes, with which they are well acquainted, has named them honorary citizens.
An incredible adventure, that’s how to summarize the exceptional journey of the French volleyball players during these Tokyo Olympic Games. The French team was simply outstanding throughout the competition, defeating the Poles, the reigning world champions, in the quarter-finals (3-2) and the Russians, who had won the Olympics four times in their history, after a tense final (3-2).
The French coaches, who built this team that made us dream, are now back in France. They were welcomed by David Lisnard, the mayor of Cannes, as Laurent Tillie, Arnaud Josserand, and Thomas Bortolossi have a close connection with the city of Cannes.
Indeed, Laurent Tillie was a player for AS Cannes from 1980 to 1984 and from 1987 to 1991, then a coach for AS Cannes from 2001 to 2012 and for RC Cannes during the 2016-2017 season.
For his part, Arnaud Josserand, the assistant coach of the French team, has been coaching AS Cannes since 2016 and was himself a player for the club during the 1988-1989 season. Thomas Bortolossi is a statistician expert and has been part of the French team staff since 2013. He created a statistical data software for volleyball and has been assisting AS Cannes and RC Cannes in its use for several years.
“Laurent Tillie, the coach of the French team, Arnaud Josserand, his assistant, and Thomas Bortolossi, the technical staff statistician, have one thing in common: they are all intimately connected to Cannes, where they met and spent most of their careers within AS Cannes or Racing Club. The sports values they embody, such as team spirit, fraternity, and self-improvement, are the cement of our society, pillars of personal fulfillment, and vectors of social connection,” said the city’s mayor, David Lisnard, before awarding the honorary citizens of Cannes distinction to each of them.
