http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0305france-tennis0305.html
For a tennis dad in France, game is a deadly obsession
Molly Moore Washington Post Mar. 5, 2006 12:00 AM
MONT-DE-MARSAN, France - Christophe Fauviau, a self-described obsessive tennis dad, was a fixture at amateur matches throughout France in which his daughter and son competed. He often appeared at the start of sets with bottled water or cups of cola for his children, and their rivals.
Sometimes those rivals got ill during the match. They complained of seeing double; some passed out or collapsed. One fell asleep at the wheel of his car on the way home from a match he had forfeited to Fauviau's son because of sickness.
Now Fauviau has been charged with the death of that opponent and is on trial in a courtroom packed with tennis moms, dads and players, and capturing headlines across a tennis-manic nation. Prosecutors contend he drugged 28 people over a three-year period. He admits slipping the tranquilizer Temesta into the drinks but denies responsibility, saying he assumed another personality when he did it.
"I was feeling more and more self-centered," he said in court Friday after three days of testimony from acquaintances and people who said he had drugged them. "I wanted to be recognized as a good coach. That was my only aim. I was betraying my own children to give this to other players."
The case against Fauviau, a retired helicopter pilot instructor for the French military, offers a look into the often ruthlessly high-pressure life of the amateur tennis circuit.
"I was shocked," Nadine Incaby, mother of one of the youths Fauviau is accused of drugging, said in an interview during a court recess. "I couldn't imagine that kind of extreme behavior. My son had been playing his son since they were 6 years old."
But some of the young players who listened to the testimony scoffed at the notion that Fauviau's behavior was startling.
"Parents put pressure on their kids," said Benoit Tauziede, 20, another of the reported victims who is now a coach. "A lot of things happen in tennis. They're just all not so obvious."
For three years, from 2000 until 2003, Christophe Fauviau's actions were not obvious to his victims.
His daughter, Valentine, now 15, was a rapidly rising star on the French national tennis scene. His son Maxime, 18, was a lesser competitor in regional tournaments, playing as many as 70 matches a year, according to his father.
Tauziede said he played a match against Maxime in June 2003, when Tauziede was 17. At one point during the game, he noticed his knapsack was missing. When it reappeared, his water bottle had spilled onto a T-shirt in the knapsack, he said.
During the match, he suddenly began feeling dizzy.
"I was seeing two balls coming at me," he recalled.
After the game, Tauziede said, he collapsed in the shower. His parents took him to a hospital where he stayed for two days. Doctors were unable to diagnose his illness, he said.
The players Fauviau is accused of drugging range in age from 11 to 42.