Toros y salsa 2025 in Dax: how does Clemente mentally prepare for his bullfights?

The bullfighter, who will be in a mano a mano against Daniel Luque this Sunday, September 14, has been supported for six years by Olivier Campot, mental trainer and kinesiologist, who gives the keys to his work

Fear has a flaw. It passes. But you have to be aware of it, as Olivier Campot points out: "Courage is not the absence of fear. It's the ability to welcome it, to face it, to overcome it." A mental trainer since the late 1990s and a kinesiologist based in Moliets, this former professional firefighter, now 48, is one of the few people who have accompanied the matador Clemente since the beginning of his rise.

They met six years ago, during the time of the Lando-Girondin bullfighter's "crossing of the desert." When Clemente asked former rugby player Jean-Philippe Bonrepaux to help him prepare physically. "We connected. We started talking. And since then, we haven't stopped," explains Olivier Campot.

An aficionado since childhood, the Landais had to prove himself before being accepted into the mundillo. "Bullfighting is a world that remains archaic, with bullfighters often finding themselves alone with their emotions and their questions." For those people who still believe that courage resides in the crotch of men, "some wondered what I was doing there, saw me as a guru or a sorcerer." But the bullfighter's evolution after the pandemic has made their work obvious and fluid for those around him professionally.

"I'm a shadow worker, so that Clément can be in the spotlight," assures Olivier Campot. His role is to free his matador from "any mental burden" to facilitate his concentration and success. This mental preparation, like that of a high-level athlete, is based on discussions, awareness, visualizations, manipulations, and "details that make the difference."

"There's a success objective and task objectives: opening the Great Gate; OK, but first, you have to think about this, this, and this...", reveals Olivier Campot. The method doesn't exclude injury, "a reality of the job," adversity, or underperformance, as in "the bullfight at the Dax feria, which had to be digested and rectified."

Among other keys, the mental trainer mentions "respect for the bull." Instead of seeing it as an adversary, "each bull is an enigma to be solved." Whatever it is, good or bad, the animal is seen as "an indispensable companion to Clemente's triumph."