Chelles (AFP)
Are the Olympics postponed for a year? What does it matter! Barely deconfigured, Charlotte Hym took her board to spin at the Chelles skatepark to work on her figures and give herself another year of fun, while waiting for the big meeting in Tokyo where skateboarding made its debut.
A bag on her back and two, three odds and ends to eat, Charlotte Hym leaves Paris and her beloved place in the Republic with her skateboard to go to the eastern suburbs, in Chelles (Seine-et-Marne). The young woman, wavy black hair held under a cap, hurries to join the CosaNostra Skate Park where her coach Mathias Tomer is waiting.
The skatepark, bordered by greenery and inhabited by immense firs, is quite empty, epidemic of Covid-19 obliges. High level athlete, Charlotte Hym has a license. It will therefore be a one-to-one with the trainer, in the covered part of this 2000 m2 park, which also includes a brand new bowl (a sort of curved swimming pool located outside).
Trained in the street school, she is not however hostile to the skatepark. "There is more speed, there are rails, we try to work on the figures in the best possible conditions, and not with 50 scooters of 2 and a half which pass you in front", in République or in Bastille.
- Without pressure -
The French team athlete does a few ranges on small obstacles and then increases in intensity in a space that still keeps traces of confinement, between stubborn dust and spider webs.
This 27-year-old Parisian woman has lived through the constrained 55 days rather well but celebrated the deconfinement greatly by going all-out riding! "It's a great pleasure not to have a time limit! I skated direct from 9 am to noon in République and then I went skating elsewhere, at the Trocadéro, at the Louvre. There are no more tourists, you can skate everywhere , we made tourists skateboarding. It's over, now we're enjoying it. "
Doctor in cognitive neuroscience since the defense of her thesis last November on "Effect of voice, language and maternal smell on quadruped motor skills of newborns", she knew how to put it into perspective by learning about the postponement of the Olympic Games from Tokyo.
"Skateboarding is an activity that doesn't need competitions. It's not the one that jumps the highest, that runs the fastest. So I'm going to have fun for another year. not a patient pressure to tell me: but what am I going to do, I missed my whole life because I had planned to do it there, "she explains.
- 'Stand out' -
"I'm going to work even more, I'm going to learn new tricks, I'm going to be too happy to be able to do things that I dreamed of doing and that I didn't have time to work because the Games were coming".
His coach, also a national trainer at the French Federation, recalls the philosophy of skateboarding: "No opponent, no opposition, you don't need to win, you have to stand out, be creative".
At the Games, skateboarding will be two events: the street (obstacles reminiscent of urban furniture) and the bowl (or 'park' at the Olympic Games, curves in a pool). Each nation can win a maximum of 3 tickets in each of the four categories (male and female street, male and female bowl / park).
No skateboarder is yet qualified, the Olympic tickets having to be allotted to the 20 best world of a final general classification having been stopped at mid-term because of the pandemic of new coronavirus.
Eighteenth in the world just before confinement, Charlotte Hym potentially has her ticket in her pocket in the street.
"It's an experience to live, there are some who are for, others against. Why not go there if you have the opportunity?", Me, I skate every day non-stop and that's what counts ", she slips.
© 2020 AFP