SPRING, Texas – Cecile Canqueteau-Landi fit “in the box”, as she herself said. She was thin. She was blonde. She was very good at gymnastics.
And so, at age 9, she was taken to be part of the French national team program, a path that led her to the 1996 Olympics.
There was reward in this journey. Yet looking back nearly three decades later, Landi wonders how many promising young athletes have had their careers and lives changed – and not for the better – because they didn’t fit someone’s preconceived notion of what a gymnast should look like. when the time came. completed 10 years.
When Landi transitioned into coaching in the early 2000s, she vowed not to make the same mistake.
So perhaps it’s no coincidence that when Landi and her husband Laurent – himself a former member of the French national team – step onto the Bercy Arena track for the women’s Olympic qualifiers next Sunday, they will do so while leading the oldest team US women’s gymnastics – headline by Simone Biles, 27 years old – the Americans have already sent to the modern Games.
In another country, in another time, perhaps Biles will become something more than an icon.
“An athlete like Simone would never have reached her full potential in France,” said Cecile. “Because she would have been pushed aside because she didn’t fit into that category.”
For the Landis – who began training Biles in 2017 – there is no “box”. There can not be.
“It’s not the athlete who needs to adjust to the coaches,” said Laurent Landi. “Coaches need to adjust athletes and athletes’ abilities.”
Biles was already 20 and the reigning Olympic champion when the Landis agreed to lead the elite program at the World Champions Center, the massive gym run by the Biles family in the Houston suburbs.
They knew Biles fairly well at the time, having already coached gymnasts who had competed alongside Biles at several world championships and the 2016 Olympics. During the interview process, all three agreed that there was no point—or fun—in having Biles just try. maintain your supernatural talent. To keep her engaged, they needed to make sure she would follow through.
The result was perhaps the best gymnastics of Biles’s remarkable career, a stretch that includes three all-around world titles and a handful more entries in the sport’s Code of Points with her name next to it, from the triple-double floor exercise for the Yurchenko double jump who received a standing ovation at the Olympic trials last month.
Biles sees her relationship with the Landis as more of a partnership.
“They were great mentors in my adult life (because) they got to see and enjoy the more mature Simone,” Biles said. “They helped me a lot, not just in the gym, but outside of it as well.”
When Biles moved into her first home, Cecile showed up and showed her how to operate the dishwasher. When a gymnast who had just gotten her driver’s license had a problem with one of her tires, Cecile went to a nearby gas station and gave a tutorial on how to use the air pump.
“If we can help and they want help, then why not?” she said, with a laugh.
The trick is finding a way to provide that help in a safe and productive way, especially amid a cultural shift in sport that aims to empower athletes to take control of their gymnastics. It’s a delicate needle to thread. What serves as motivation for one athlete may be interpreted negatively by another.
It’s a reality the Landis know well as they try to find the right balance between being too rigid and too relaxed. They grew up at a time when the coach/athlete relationship was one-sided. There were no comings and goings. There was no discussion. The coach set the standards and expectations. The athlete met them or they didn’t last long.
The shift to a more cooperative approach is long overdue, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Laurent Landi admits he is not the most patient coach, although those around him say he has softened a bit over the years. He also understands that if he wants to keep doing this for a living, he doesn’t have much of a choice.
“Yes, there will be frustration,” he said. “But you can always work around some things and just take away your pride (as a coach) and make sure the athletes are still developing their skills.”
It’s an approach that helped the World Champion Center’s elite program send five athletes to the Olympic Trials, with Biles and Jordan Chiles making up the five-woman US team, while Joscelyn Roberson and Tiana Sumanasekera were selected as alternates.
It’s the kind of success Roberson envisioned when he moved to the Houston suburbs a few years ago to train with the Landis. She was intimidated at first, before realizing that her new trainers “have a million different ways to train a skill,” a marked departure from what she was used to.
The goal is to meet athletes where they are on a given day, understanding that no two gymnasts are the same and what works for one may not necessarily work for another. Perhaps even more important, they have learned to evolve as the nature of coaching evolves.
“We are not always right,” said Laurent. “If you do it your way all the time, you’re going to hurt most athletes. Maybe one will survive and be an incredible person, an incredible athlete, but the (other) 90% will be broke. …We had to adjust to Simone, otherwise we would have broken her.”
It wasn’t just Biles’ age that they had to accommodate, but also her schedule. She is no longer a precocious teenager who buries herself in the gym. She’s a newlywed whose schedule is packed with everything from corporate commitments to building a home and family with her husband, Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens.
“When (we) tell him, he just hears ‘you’re missing practice’ and kind of freaks out,” Biles said. “Because he sees all the end goals and then he gets the calendar and then he’s like, ‘Oh, okay, fine. We’ll do this today, we’ll do that.’ So it takes time for him to process.”
Biles certainly looks well-prepared. She arrives in Paris at the height of her powers, more than a decade after rising to the top of her sport. She will be accompanied by two coaches who consider the trip more of a business trip than a homecoming.
Although the Landis have been approached to take over the women’s national team program in France in recent years, returning never made much sense to them, even with the women’s program is in the midst of a resurgence.
“I think our family will be very proud, probably more than us,” Cecile Landi said. “Because in a weird way, it’s just work for us.”
And maybe, goodbye too.
Cecile, a longtime supporter of NCAA gymnastics, earlier this year agreed to become co-coach at the University of Georgia. Laurent will remain at the World Champions Center for a short time until Landis’ daughter Juliette — who will be diving for France during the Games — graduates from high school next spring.
After that, who knows? The young gymnast placed in a box became a coach who no longer imposes limitations on anyone, especially herself.
“I think I did everything I could in the elite, and beyond what I could have imagined when I was a little French girl in a small town,” Cecile said. “I trained the greatest of all time. I’ve coached a lot of kids. I’ve had a lot of great athletes in the NCAA and elite and I feel like I want to try what’s next, a new challenge.
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