There is a certain sense of karma, of colonial revenge, on Sunday evening at the truncated pyramid of Bercy, a Mayan imagery on the banks of the Seine. In the centre, with all the spotlights on them, a group of gymnasts cry and cry and console each other and console above all the inconsolable Melanie de Jesus dos Santos. It is the tragedy of French gymnastics, so ambitious, so good, that it moves even Antoine Griezmann, a stunned spectator in the stands. After an incident during the warm-up – a fall on the uneven bars, the leader in the locker room, Marine Boyer, suffers a slight concussion: there are discussions, but it is decided that she should compete, and while competing the treacherous apparatus betrays her again, her hands slip and she falls – the entire weight of the team falls on Melanie, from Martinique, who trains in Texas with the Landi couple, the same coaches, the same gym as Simone Biles. As phenomenal as she is mentally fragile, Melanie collapses under the pressure. Favourite for a medal, France does not qualify for the final. Neither does any of its gymnasts for any apparatus at all. The Games are over for her.
If life were a long, calm river, as the Loire promises, Kaylia Nemour would have been with them, because with them she grew and multiplied, and perhaps instead of crying they would dance, but a stupid conflict prevented that. French from Chinon, vineyards among the fantastic castles of the Loire and bakery student, her other passion, in FP, Nemour competes for Algeria, her father’s passport, after a clash with the French federation. At 17, she will be a girl in an adult gymnastics, the only Frenchwoman on the most important days, but La Marseillaise will not be played in her honour if she wins gold.
In the women’s gymnastics universe that revolves around Simone Biles, there is room for small, bright planets to spin in their own orbit and shine. On the uneven bars, the most complicated and dangerous apparatus, the one on which only the greatest specialists are capable of attempting impossible movements without fear of failure, Kaylia Nemour shines brightest. It is the space in which she best expresses herself. Other people’s hell is their garden.
In last Sunday’s qualifications, with the exercise of difficulty 7.1, the highest of all those attempted on all the apparatus, including the biles, she achieved a score of 15.6, more than any other, and between the two bars her movements are technically dense and absolutely fluid, and there is one that she has invented herself, the nemour, of course, which adds 0.7 points and consists, explains the popularizer Cristina Martínez, in a tkachev release (countermovement above the bar) in an extended position from inside stalder (turn near the bar in a closed pike position: with the legs together and stretched between the arms). Thanks to her exceptional asymmetrical bars and her solidity on the other apparatus – vault, beam, floor – Nemour finishes fifth and desolately sad, so serious, so elegant in her movements, almost languor, in the final of the all-around competition that crowns Simone Biles ahead of Rebeca Andrade. Her moment will come on Sunday, in the uneven bars final, the only apparatus in which neither Andrade nor Biles qualified, and in which she is the favorite.
“I have been preparing the move for months,” Nemour explained a few weeks ago in The Team. “I tried hard to master this complex connection, inspired by what men do on the horizontal bar. “Above all, I managed to ignore everything that was happening around me.”
All around him, lightning and thunder.
The storm broke in 2021. The French federation required all its gymnasts selected for the Games to be concentrated either at the CAR in Paris or at the special centre in Saint-Étienne. Nemour and her club refused to allow the transfer. The teenager and her parents, along with a handful of other young gymnasts and their families, are also opposed to uprooting. They explained that they were at home like nowhere else, that the gym of their club, of which their mother is the president, was magnificent and that they could not separate themselves from their lifelong coaches, the married couple Marc and Gina Chirilcenco.
Shortly before, at the age of 14, Nemour had to undergo surgery on both knees, which were suffering from osteochondritis, an abnormality in the growth zones of bones and cartilage. For the family, it was a congenital problem; for the federation doctors, it was a symptom of overtraining. Kaylia had surgery on one knee in July 2021, and on the other six weeks later. She was forbidden to walk, used crutches and underwent rehabilitation. After eight months of hard recovery, she wanted to return to training. The federation forbade her to do so. It required a longer recovery period. She then decided to become Algerian, her father’s nationality. In July 2022, the international federation approved the change of nationality.
Algeria supports her, pays for her training, which she continues in her lifelong gym, is with her, and registers her for the African championships in Pretoria 2023. France wants to ban her from participating. It reminds her that the rule requires that anyone who changes nationality must spend a year without competing with their new country. This period would mean her farewell to the Olympic Games, as she would have to qualify between the African championships and the World Championships, which she would not be able to compete in. Her family, the Loire region, her club, start a support campaign. #libérerKaylia and #freekaylia are multiplying on the networks. The clamor reaches the French Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who orders the federation to release the international pass. A few days later, Nemour is proclaimed African champion, a few months later runner-up in the world uneven bars in Antwerp behind the Chinese Qiyuan Qin. Paris welcomes her.
“We got over it and came out stronger,” says the now-liberated teenager, who despite everything remains close friends with the gymnasts on the French Olympic team. “It doesn’t matter what flag I’m waving or what colour my leotard or tights are, I’m the only one on the apparatus. What determines my performance is the work I’ve put in over the years in training and what I’m able to reproduce on D-day.”
The conflict, her determination, the struggle of her family and her club against forced displacement, opened up a different, more immense universe for her. The African champion is destined to become the first African gymnast to win an Olympic title.
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