28 -year -old judoka claims to have received many shots on the face, carried by his then companion and coach, who denies. The latter had already been released in April by the Bobigny Criminal Court. The prosecution had appealed.
Le Monde with AFP
Judo coach Alain Schmitt was again relaxed on Friday, June 10, by the Paris Court of Appeal of facts of domestic violence on his former Judoka companion, the Olympic champion Margaux Pingot.
The two athletes have been tearing themselves off for six months on the benches of the courts and by media interposed about a violent altercation which occurred in November 2021 at Blanc-Mesnil (Seine-Saint-Denis), for which the coach had already been released in April by the Bobigny Criminal Court.
“I’m glad the magistrates have shown common sense. (…) I may be able to live normally,” reacted Alain Schmitt, after the hearing. “It was a lot of expectations, a lot of doubts, a lot of words to take, things that I had a lot of trouble collecting and today I am relieved,” he added. For his part, Margaux Pinot was not present at the hearing and did not wish to react to this decision, said his lawyer, Rachid Madid.
Two opposite versions
The 28-year-old judoka claims to have received many shots on the face by Alain Schmitt, which his ex-companion, 38, has always denied. As at first instance, the accusation had requested a year in suspended prison sentence for Alain Schmitt. His first release, whose prosecution had appealed, had aroused indignation in French judo.
During the two trials, one in Bobigny in December, the second in Paris in April, the two athletes did not change their line of defense, delivering contradictory accounts of the events that occurred at the Judoka home. Linked on the tatamis by a coach relationship to athlete at the Club de l’Etoile Sportive du Blanc-Mesnil, Alain Schmitt and Margaux Pingot have been maintaining a confidential love affair since 2017.
While he had to fly to Israel a few hours later to take the job of coach of the national female team, the technician argued in the middle of the night with Margaux Pinot. He described a crazy woman of rage and jealousy who threw himself on him, before a fight, like a “tornado”, based on judo taking, bursts. The duo has violently hit the walls and objects from the apartment, according to his story. Mr. Schmitt denies having brought the slightest blow to his partner.
The scene was played in a very different way from Margaux Pinot, who narrates a surge of violence from his then coach. “He slams my head two, three times on the ground. Then he goes to strangle me,” she detailed several times. “It was probably the judo that saved me,” she added to the bar. Many bruises had been noted the following days on the two protagonists.
Alain Schmitt never left for Israel and now leads to the Bulgarian judo teams. As for Margaux Pinot, she won a bronze medal at the end of April at the European Judo Championships, in Sofia, also in Bulgaria.