In just over six weeks’ time, France will stage the European Athletics Team Championships when Lille hosts the Super League and on Saturday, Jean-Marc Pontvianne and Melina Robert-Michon showed fine form ahead of the three-day event which begins on 23 June.
Many of the country’s leading athletes were in action in the first round of the French Clubs competition and in Nimes, Pontvianne really made his point.
Twice the national indoor triple jump champion, Pontvianne broke 17m outdoors for the first time as he took his personal best of 16.81m to 17.09m. It is a European lead outdoors and he is the first European to surpass 17m this year.
But it should not come as too much of a surprise because he jumped an indoor lifetime best of 17.13m at the French Indoor Championships in Bordeaux in February and has transferred that form superbly to the outdoor scene.
History is very much in the air when it comes to triple jumping, Lille and team competitions. it was there in 1995 - at the European Cup - when Jonathan Edwards cleared his amazing albeit wind-assisted mark 18.43m just weeks before he broke the world record at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg.
With selection looming for this year’s event between 23-25 June, France will be aiming to build on their third-place finish from Cheboksary in 2015.
It was their best finish in the competition since it evolved from the European Cup in 2009 and on home soil, the incentive will be even greater to end higher up the table.
While Pontvianne only made his European Team Championships debut in 2015, Melina Robert-Michon represented France for the first time all the way back in Gateshead in 2000 when the competition was known as the European Cup.
Robert-Michon, who won a silver medal at the Olympic Games last summer, has already been out to 63.14m this year and the 37-year-old surpassed the 60m line once again with 60.31m in Venissieux.
Mamadou Kasse Hann also finds himself in a good position to be in the team after winning the 400m hurdles in Nice in 49.54, a victory which takes him to the top of the European rankings while joint European 100m record-holder Jimmy Vicaut ran 20.93 (+2.4) in the 200m
It was there also that Valentin Lavillenie cleared 5.60m in the pole vault and European indoor 400m champion Floria Guei won the 200m in 23.46 (+3.4).
Alexandra Tavernier, who won world hammer bronze in Beijing in 2015, threw 70.31m in Annecy where Kevin Mayer, fresh from his heptathlon gold at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Belgrade, ran 54.57 on his debut in the 400m hurdles and reached 63.37 with the javelin.