Nelson Monfort - a French "citizen of the world"

So sometimes, as British poet Lord Byron and US writer Mark Twain (among others probably) wrote "Truth" really "is stranger than fiction".

Earlier this week there was a spoof piece here "Incomplete Olympic faction", in which special mention was made to France's most annoying sports journalist Nelson Monfort, and his excrutiating poolside interview with women's relay swimmer Ophélie-Cyrielle Etienne.

Nelson Monfort (screenshot TV interview)

Well (cue Twilight Zone music please) the Wall Street Journal has now published a piece, giving gold in terms of OTT sports broadcasting enthusiasm to none other than...Nelson Monfort.




All right so the author of the WSJ piece got his facts wrong - to fit his theory so it seems: admitting his error of "reporting" that Monfort had been commentating from the Olympic pool and amending the post somewhat (although not sufficiently) to reflect that the squeals and Marseillaise-style references had been coming from Roxana Maracineanu and Alexandre Boyon respectively and not Monfort.

But the gist of the whole piece was how sports journalists from around the world reacted when their athletes won, with the French veteran perhaps being "awarded gold" for his broadcast enthusiasm - read "chauvinism".

Monfort of course claims he's not at all "chauvinistic" but rather a "citizen of the world."

To show that has something of a hollow ring to it, here's a clip from those masters of French satire, Les Guignols de l'info.

It might be a couple of years old, but it mixes Monfort's habit of slipping from French to English with his unbridled and excessive enthusiasm for the country's sporting...um...prowess.

The mark of every "good" sports journalist?