As the freeski halpipe final took place in Beijing overnight from Friday to Saturday, we wanted to understand what motivated the athletes to get laid without protection.
Kevin Rolland, Antoine Adelisse and Tess Ledeux told us about their daily way of living with fear, but also of managing it.
From our special correspondent in Zhangjiakou,
Sensitive souls refrain.
In freestyle skiing, even more than in football or rugby, when the TV shows us over and over these images of knees saying shit to each other after a violent shock, our brain refuses to be confronted with the unbearable.
On Saturday, during the freeski halfpipe competition, we had to close our eyes several times when we saw the skiers fall badly after failed receptions, as with the Briton Gus Kenworthy, so the body hit the coping (top of the pipe) after a jump of almost 6 meters.
It must be said that the wind was blowing hard, too hard and we even wondered if the judges were not putting the flyers at risk by letting the competition play out.
On arrival, fortunately, more fear than harm for the athletes, who all got up without too many sores.
We necessarily had a more attentive eye when Kevin Rolland started, he who was close to death in April 2019 after a failed attempt at the world record for the highest jump in a quarter-pipe.
For ordinary mortals, it is useless to try to understand how the boy managed to find the strength to go back on the attack and brave the fear of (re)falling.
In reality, this fear never really leaves them, it is part of them.
We still wanted to unravel this mystery and understand the workings of this ambivalent relationship that links freestylers to freaking out.
Okay, organizers, with the gusts of wind, maybe we should put the halfpipe final on hold.
The English Gus Kenworthy has just had a big scare by falling on the coping.
Obviously no breakage.
pic.twitter.com/m9ruhHjjLb
— Philippe Berry (@ptiberry) February 19, 2022
Access to this content has been blocked to respect your choice of consent
By clicking on "
I ACCEPT
", you accept the deposit of cookies by external services and will thus have access to third-party content
I ACCEPT
You can also modify your choices at any time via "choice of consent".
More information on the Cookie Management Policy page.
Confidence (and humor) to tame the jitters
Basically, with all the respect we have for them, you still have to have a little grain to get into this discipline.
On the phone before the Games, new silver medalist in slopestyle Tess Ledeux told us that, from the age of four, when she was invited to birthday parties and her boyfriends went sledding, she built side jumps.
It puts the temperament a bit.
"I don't think we're crazy, she tempers, but it's true that as a child, you have to be a little daredevil because you take falls, you put boxes on yourself, it hurts , and despite that we are going back!
But when you reach a certain level, it's no longer a question of madness because otherwise you'd do anything and you'd hurt yourself a lot.
On the contrary, everything is very controlled.
If there is the slightest risk… Well, there are always risks but, for example, if it's too windy or the visibility is poor, we don't go there.
»
In their profession, fear is not a negotiable element, it is an obligatory component.
“She is still there, testifies the freestyler Antoine Adelisse, unhappy in Beijing because of physical glitches.
We put ourselves in danger, we must be aware of it.
Afterwards, the question is: to what extent are you willing to put your life in danger?
The more extreme you go in terms of technique, the higher the risk and the more fear there is.
»
We must therefore learn to tame it, not turn our backs on it.
For that, self-confidence remains the best ally.
“As we repeat our jumps, we arrive with so much confidence that it takes over everything else.
Me, when I try jumps that I have never executed, I am more excited at the idea of doing them than anxious by the idea of falling.
And even if I fall, that's not even the question, it's just that I want to try.
It's intoxicating, you get addicted to it.
»
Injuries are part of the job
If confidence is an essential lever, humor is another.
This is what we saw when watching videos of the French freestyle skiing team's training camps.
Between two sessions, we often see Adelisse messing around with her teammates and her coach, Grégory Guenet.
“If we really took everything into consideration, without hindsight, without second degree, we would say that we are completely crazy.
It allows us to externalize all that, ”reflects the Nantes resident.
"That's freestyle, it's a cool atmosphere," adds Tess Ledeux.
Basically, it was groups of friends who went to do jumps on the edges of the slopes.
It's an extreme sport but in a relaxed mood.
To come back to fear, the Savoyard replays the sketch of the hunters, the Unknowns.
“For me, there are two kinds of fear.
The good fear, the one that will push you not to do anything, to control your movements, your speed, and the bad one, the one that paralyzes you, which makes you lose your means and which will increase the risk of injury.
As we grow up, we learn to recognize them.
»
Note that with one or the other, injury is a must for these acrobats.
In 2020, Tess Ledeux had the painful experience of breaking her knee after a fall.
And we're not talking about Antoine Adelisse, who collects scars like we do magnets from French regions on the fridge.
In 2016, it was the cruciate ligaments of the right knee that farted.
The following year, broken collarbone.
In 2018, in Pyeongchang, finally, the left knee crusaders.
Not jealous.
And yet, the guy never thought for a single moment of leaving everything behind.
“I managed to come back because there is nothing more important in my life than skiing,” he says.
But let me tell you that it's hard to go from a high-level skier to "I can't walk anymore".
Because when you do the crossovers, you learn to walk again, not for long but it's still a mentally painful step.
You freestyle, you do crazy things and, all of a sudden, you find yourself in a rehabilitation center where you're nothing.
»
Kevin Rolland, the stubborn miracle
For Kevin Rolland, we speak squarely of the final stage, the one where the fear is no longer that of falling, but that of death.
In his film "Resilience", broadcast on Eurosport and for which he granted us an interview, the images are chilling.
We see him jump from the top of the track and reach the speed of 100 km/h before flying into the air.
If the impact is masked by the huge module of snow, we hear its cry, horrified, chilling.
When help rushes to his bedside, the words spoken over the walkie-talkie leave little room for doubt: “Vital prognosis engaged”.
As a result, after several days in a coma, the Frenchman fractured his pelvis, his lungs, ribs and pancreas were also affected.
He will have to use a wheelchair before he, too, learns to walk again.
However, when he wakes up, his first words are “I have to go back”.
In vain the doctors repeat to him that, no, Mr. Rolland, skiing is over, the young dad is not listening.
And after months of rehab and hard work, he's back on the pipe.
But not without apprehension.
At least initially.
“After the accident, he concedes, my fear gauge went up quite a bit.
Because I fried quite a few cartridges, I know that I no longer have room for a second big fall.
Inevitably, it inhibited me, I had lost a bit of self-confidence.
It was the first time in my life that I felt that.
It had to be tamed but I believe today that I got there.
»
Even if, with age, and with it fatherhood and a form of wisdom, he “now tries to calculate things more, to take fewer unnecessary risks.
» « Even if we always take risks in this discipline, engage the miraculous.
But let's say that I try that these risks are useful, that they serve the performance.
I don't know if that means much (laughs)!
".
Anyway, no matter how hard we try, we'll never really understand what's going on in your head, ladies and gentlemen.
Sport
Olympic Games 2022: How Tess Ledeux got her figure stolen, and the gold with it, on the Big Air
Sport
Olympics 2022: After coming close to death, Kevin Rolland is "happy to be alive and to participate in the Games"
kevin rolland
Sport
freestyle
Ski
Winter Olympics 2022
0 comment
0 share
Share on Messenger
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Flipboard
Share on Pinterest
Share on Linkedin
Send by Mail
To safeguard
A fault ?
To print