As far back as I can remember, the sport has always been part of my life.
I grew up in a small town called Pont de l’Arche, which is between Louviers and Rouen in France with my parents and my older brother, Arthur.
It’s among these three cities that I spent most of my childhood.
Pont de l’Arche was my home, my first friends, my school and the place of practice of my first sporting love: gymnastics.
Louviers represents my first skating club, the Ice Skating Club Louviers (ISCL), and I have proudly worn the colors for 9 years. Even today, this part of my life as a skater continues to grow with me.
And Rouen is the city where I was born and where I accompanied my brother to realize his dreams of fencer from my 2-year-old. But it is also where some of my ambitions have been realized.
I also think it’s my brother who inspired me for a long time, he was able to climb the ladder of his sport gradually, perhaps not as much as his hopes, but enough to finish French Champions with his lifelong friends.
The friendship that they have been able to weave through sport will remain unfailing bonds, even if they stay 20 years without seeing each other.
This memory will be stronger than anything and although I have already had the chance to live it several times, I hope that someday will be reaching my ultimate goal:
Winning a medal at the World Championships.
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While waiting for this success, nothing predestined me to skating, on the contrary. My mother didn’t want me to do the same sport as my brother and that suited me well. I had also made a school trip to the ice skating rink of Louviers, but I didn’t like this sport, I was cold, I fell and suddenly I was wet. It really wasn’t a success. So when my mother asked me if I wanted to do it, my answer was categorical: « No, I don’t want to skate, I want to do gymnastics! »
So I started gymnastics. As my brother before with fencing, it was the Olympic Games that gave me this desire to practice. So it was my sport from my 5 years to my 11 years. In parallel, I also tried riding, dancing, piano, drawing and certainly many other sports and activities.
Until the day my childhood friend, Melanie, told me that she would start skating again and that if I wanted, I could do a free trial. Although I struggled to leave the barrier and I fell 13 times, this session finally pleased me and skating joined my others sports in my schedule. Rather ironic, it took me a few years to enjoy it!
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I was fortunate to have a mother who was committed to her children and who accepted to take my brother and me to practice our activities everywhere. In thinking about it, she must certainly have feared Wednesdays. For example, at one time, she began by leading me to dance on Rouen, chained with skating at Louviers, and returned home to eat at Pont de l’Arche. After that, she took me to gymnastics, went to Rouen to drive my brother to fencing, came back to get me at Pont de l’Arche, before we went to pick up my brother. And finally, we went home!
I’ll never be grateful enough for all that she has done for us, to help us realize our dreams and the ongoing support we have had and still have.
Not to mention my father, who for a time was my support for each of my gymnastics competitions but also some of skating. Despite some disagreements between us, he has also been in a way a source of motivation to reach the high-level of my sport.
But how did I go from a multitude of sports to one?
As time went on, I enjoyed practicing gymnastics and skating, so I stopped doing other things because I wasn’t interested in them.
It was during my last year of gymnastics that I experienced my first fright and this was also the main reason for my stop. I started to be afraid to go out on the beam and instead of stopping, I mentally encouraged myself to try again. Unfortunately for me, I stumbled even more and I hit both knees in my nose. My trainer, having seen nothing of the event, believed in internal bleeding and forced me to lie down while I was feeling well. I went with the firefighters. Fortunately, I didn’t have anything.
In all this, it’s not my trip with firefighters that scared me, but rather to have to do this movement out of the beam, yet very simple. That’s what made me go to gymnastics crying.
My mother then made an agreement with me, I could stop, but I had to finish my year first and honor my commitments.
What has also pushed me to ice skating is the arrival of a new coach at the club, Valérie Arsa-Ballester. She recreated synchronized skating teams and I saw all my friends skating together, but I couldn’t participate because I was already engaged with the gym.
My Skating Life 