Eight years after the bronze in Sochi (Russia), the 27-year-old Savoyard has managed to grab the title of Olympic vice-champion in Beijing. This is the sixth French medal since the start of the Games.
The impression is misleading. To see them throw themselves into the slope with risk-all manners, then clap their hands like in a skatepark as soon as they cross the finish line, you would think they had just come out of adolescence. However, the snowboard cross champions are not young daredevils looking for fun and thrills. At the Beijing Games, this Wednesday, February 9, the podium of the Olympic event invited on its highest step an American with a long past like a day without sunshine. Lindsey Jacobellis is playing in her fifth consecutive Winter Games in China. For her debut in Turin in 2006, she won the silver medal. Since then, she was pursued by bad luck. In Zhangjiakou, she won gold. At last. On his last try. Clarification: the American celebrated her 36th birthday last August.
In defiance of popular belief, snowboard cross is therefore not a business of young shoots inhabited by audacity and devoid of complexes. Discipline requires wisdom and experience. The French Chloé Trespeuch, 27, can testify to this. His silver medal, won on Wednesday afternoon after a four-man final controlled from start to finish, rewards his patience. “I chose a fairly risky trajectory, especially in the semi-finalsshe explains. I was sometimes behind, but that didn’t bother me. I like having to come back. Being behind during a race forces me to think strategically, it further reinforces the challenge of each race. Challenge and competition have always been my driving force in sport.”
Surprise medal in Sochi
Put on skis from the age of two, on the slopes of Val Thorens, Chloé Trespeuch quickly discovers that the pleasure is greater to slide on a single board. She got into snowboarding. Learning is facilitated by the protective presence of a big brother, Léo, seized before her by the snowboard virus. The eldest enters the first in the France team. In 2007, he won a gold medal at the University Games. “He was my first role model”recognizes the young woman.
At the Sochi Games in 2014, she was not yet 20 years old, a thin list of achievements, but she surprised everyone by winning the bronze medal. At the time, she attributes the credit to the carelessness of her youth. But this first Olympic success, which arrived without warning, plunged her into an abyss of doubt and uncertainty. “I started thinking that I had to prove to others and to myself that I deserved this medal.she explains. The pressure I imposed on myself quickly became difficult to bear. I lost this feeling of freedom that I felt when I was younger in snowboarding.”
Disillusion in PyeongChang
Four years later, at the PyeongChang 2018 Games, the experts drew a medalist profile for her with fine lines. The forecast is credible, after two podiums a year earlier at the world championships. But a fall in the final, when the medal was reaching out to him, sends his illusions to the bottom. “A very big disappointmentshe admits. But this failure led me to work even harder, technically and mentally. My bronze medal in 2014 was very unexpected. The money, today, is really the medal of the work.
On her descent from the podium on Wednesday, Chloé Trespeuch said she did not yet know where she would store her charm once she returned home. But she will find a good place for him: “That of the Sochi Games is in my living room. I surrounded it around a rugby ball, because my companion is a professional rugby player. Having it in front of me reminds me why we play sports. And all the way to get there.”
Update : at 10:40 a.m. with the story of our special correspondent.