Ana Vozone Apr 18, 2019:

Age groups https://www.le-sportif.com/Federations/FFA_Category.aspx

Philippa Smith Apr 17, 2019:

@Charles I agree - and tadpoles is a great image for the littlest players!

Charles Davis Apr 17, 2019:

Hi Philippa That's rather a shame, in a way. They're still alive and well in Spain. One of my favourites is "alevines", which literally means "fry", as in young fish; it makes me think of tadpoles!

Philippa Smith Apr 17, 2019:

@Charles Hi Charles, don't know if you were referring to football and where, but the football authorities in my neck of the woods (and I think it was national) stopped using those cute terms like "poussins" a few years back and now all the different age categories are "under" like in English: U7, U9, U11, etc. :-)

Charles Davis Apr 17, 2019:

But when we get down to things like "cadets", "minimes", "benjamins" and "poussins" there generally aren't any words for them in English and you're forced to use "Under" if you have to translate them.

Charles Davis Apr 17, 2019:

@Caroline It is a bit confusing, I agree, and a further point to bear in mind is that normally a person qualifies as "under 16", for example, for the whole of the year in which they turn 16, so if your birthday is in January you can still compete for the rest of that year at Under-16 even though from January onwards you are actually already 16. At least that's how it's applied in the contexts I'm familiar with; I can't swear that it's true of French athletics.

If this person was an Espoir in 2017-2018 I think it means that they must have been born 1995 or 1996. But maybe somebody else should check my maths!

As for the fact that there are younger categories, that's standard across other sports. In this case (athletics) there's an Under-20 category, as I said; it's understood that if you are an Under-23 you are older than an Under-20, though I'm not sure you're actually disqualified from competing at Under-23 if you're only 19, say.

Caroline Marsh (asker) Apr 17, 2019:

Oh dear, my maths! Thank you Charles Davis, that's a great answer. The only reason I wasn't going for an "under..." is because there are other specific categories beneath that age as well, going by the listings of the Fédération Française d'Athlétisme categories. However, it would be age 20-22 for the events she did in 2017/2018 if she had to have been born between '97 and '99. Off to fact check her date of birth now...

Charles Davis Apr 17, 2019:

@Caroline If you're going to close the question I won't post an answer, but since, as you've shown, "Espoirs" is simply an age category, and in 2019 it means people born 1997-1999 and therefore aged about 20-22, I would suggest that Under-23 or U23 might be what you want here. It's a recognised category:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-23_athletics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Athletics_U23_Champio...

The next one down is Under-20, which corresponds to FR Juniors, Under-18 being Cadets, and so on.

They are in effect young Seniors, in EN terms, since athletes aged 20 and over are Seniors, whereas in French seniors are 22 and over.

I've had to deal with this kind of question before in football; English tends to use "Under-00" for most age categories.

Philippa Smith Apr 17, 2019:

You could maybe just use "youth contender"...

Caroline Marsh (asker) Apr 17, 2019:

https://www.athle.fr/asp.net/main.html/html.aspx?htmlid=25

Caroline Marsh (asker) Apr 17, 2019:

I came back to close the question quickly hoping I hadn't wasted anybody's time yet. Further research has shown it is a small age group of people born between 1997-1999! So now I just need to find the corresponding category in English but there doesn't seem to be one. I think the best I can do is "18-20 age group". Thank you all for your help. Phil Goddard, seed was one word I was trying to dredge up. But doesn't seem it is that. (seedling maybe given the ages, tee hee)

Carol Gullidge Apr 17, 2019:

Phil's "contender" seems good to me!

Carol Gullidge Apr 17, 2019:

I think it's just "hope" or "hopeful"...

My guess is that although she didn't go on to win, she was their best hope:

... the number-one hope and 13th woman in...

philgoddard Apr 17, 2019:

The dictionary says "contender", or you could say "most promising player", though I don't know what that means in practical terms:
https://dictionary.reverso.net/french-english/espoir
Or could it mean seed?