Co-founder of the French Touch Academy, Charles Auffray gives us all the details around the creation of the 1st Padel/studies in France and its padel academy in Kuwait.

“Professionalizing the approach to padel for players”

 Padel Magazine : First of all Charles we know that you are very active at the moment, can you tell us where are you in all your projects? 

 Charles Auffray:  "On the one hand, I have the academy in Cap d'Agde, where we are still in transition. We have a fairly large infrastructure with 8 courts now, more people playing, more emulation. It follows the evolution of padel in Europe and in the world.

We are also very determined to strengthen training: more internships, given that we have just done internships for adults, we plan to do some for young people, increase the volume of internships in the summer in particular.

We will continue the training that we started with sports studies. For the moment we only have one because we only had one request, but we will try with the birth of the new boarding school, to create a padel sports studies group too.

In the Middle East, we have ordered 20 padel courts. We are clearly on an "accelerated" pace. We plan to build 2 additional padel sites, and we see that since 2021 we have been on an exponential growth. And with everything that is happening there in terms of events, it is likely to continue to grow in the years to come.

 Padel magazine : On the Cap d'Agde part, do you want to duplicate what you have on the tennis part in padel? 

 Charles Auffray:  "That's exactly it, the idea would be to professionalize padel training, through a training center that would be created for sports studies in particular (courses in the morning and training in the afternoon). And then a training center, possibly with French/foreign players wishing to enroll in a high-level project, wanting to train 5-6 hours a day by combining padel training and physical training with our coaches.

The idea would be to professionalize the approach to their sport, and that is our goal. If we could start this at the same time as boarding school and sports studies (from September 2022 therefore) that would be great.

The city of Cap d'Agde and the International Tennis Center directed by Yannick Martinez are active partners in this long-term project. »

Middle East: 2 new sites and more than 20 new courts

 Padel Magazine : Regarding the Middle East, 20 padel courts ordered in addition to what you have created, it is colossal. How will the development of your activity take place there? 

 Charles Auffray:  « The academy there was initially tennis & fitness. We had built a padel court (indoor), when we had done the construction 3 years ago now. This academy (The Rafael Nadal Academy in Kuwait City) contains 16 tennis courts, 2000 m2 of fitness space, an indoor swimming pool, a 5000-seat stadium, it is therefore a real beautiful and large sports infrastructure.

It's more a country club than an academy, in which Kuwaitis and expatriates can come as in any club in France. At the same time, there is also a training center for young people from the federation and young people from all over the Middle East.

Padel has become so democratized that we agreed with them to order and develop the padel activity. With the 2 new sites, more than 10 padel courts will be installed, particularly in shopping centers, because they understood that it was a lever for development. And there will be a 3rd club in which there will also be 6 padel courts, all indoors.

 Padel Magazine : With all these club/court creation projects, will there be enough qualified personnel to take care of it or will you recruit more? 

 Charles Auffray:  "Honestly, as we need to be able to meet the growing need for group/individual lessons, we will need padel teachers between now and May/June who can move abroad and speak English."

Behind sport-studies... a springboard to becoming a professional player?

 Padel Magazine : How do you manage all these activities? 

 Charles Auffray:  “I go once a month to the Middle East, and I have a very good and quite efficient team there. It's managed quite well, the academy is developing, in our Middle East part it's more support/consulting.

Although we have the main academy which is under the acronym Rafael Nadal, for the next two sites which will open I think they will remain as such and will not be associated with the image of Rafa because there doesn't necessarily need to. »

 Padel Magazine : Last question, we will come back to Cap d'Agde. Behind the creation of sport-studies, do you have the ambition to create a Competition pole/Team France pole, a sort of nursery? 

 Charles Auffray:  "It would be a dream sincerely to be able to promote this sport, and to participate in the development of the high level in terms of padel. I think we have the framework and the infrastructure to do it, but now we have to develop the culture and mix the players as much as possible. And there is nothing better than an academy to do it. This is one of the objectives in the next 3-4 years."

Nasser Hoverini

Passionate about football, I discovered padel in 2019. Since then, I have been crazy in love with this sport to the point of abandoning my favorite sport.

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