VSn the weekend on the Zhangjiakou mogul course, 180 km from Beijing, the French team will be hitting some of their best cards. The day before the opening ceremony, Benjamin Cavet and Perrine Laffont easily qualified for the grand finals. Saturday, Cavet, third in qualifying, will try at 27 to put an end to Canadian hegemony. Four gold medals won by North American moguls out of the eight distributed since the appearance of the discipline at the Olympic Games in 1992. Among the women, Perrine Laffont will start as the favorite in the hope of achieving a great first . Become the first woman to retain her Olympic crown in a discipline known to be high risk. “Ben” and “Pépette”, our elite workers, are they aware of what they owe to Henri Authier?
At the beginning of the 1970s, the intrepid gymnast multiplied tricks on skis, using the foothills of the marked trails as improvised springboards. It was in Tignes, one day, that the young Authier invented the figure of the Cossack. A jump made with skis apart, hands resting on the spatulas. Always more eager for thrills, the daredevil manages to crown his baby with a backward somersault. Without knowing it, Authier has just launched the foundations of freestyle skiing. From then on, his reputation as a crazy skier quickly spread beyond the borders of old Europe. Henri, who does not speak a traitorous word of English, becomes a star across the Atlantic. The Americans respectfully call him the Indian. The “Crazy Frenchy” shines in hot dog shows, a sort of snow rodeo where, in a fairground atmosphere, the competitors swallow a succession of bumps as quickly as possible. Incongruous and surreal, this new way of skiing opens the way to a creative and free discipline far removed from the codes in force in the alpine standards. The IOC will need fifteen years to label the heritage of the Indian.
I find it completely crazy that you can go skiing in resorts like that!
In 1992, in Albertville, on the occasion of the official entry of moguls into the Olympic fold, Edgar Grospiron perpetuated Authier’s work by performing virtuoso runs under a snow shower. If thirty years later, Edgar has still not found a successor among boys, Perrine Laffont crowned in 2018 in Pyeongchang has already taken over. His father, Jean-Jacques, a close friend of the Indian, describes the exploit of Grospiron to him as a model of commitment and audacity. Since she was born, Perrine has attended the specific courses organized in Tignes with her parents every summer. Skiing in the morning on the glacier, waterjumping in the lake in the afternoon to refine your tricks. Spotted at the age of 14, the progression of the young girl is lightning. A year later, the Ariègeoise participated in her first Olympic Games in Sochi before winning the golden cup four years later in Korea. At only 23 years old, the gifted mogul has already won everything, Olympic Games, World Championship and Specialty World Cup. For a moment, overcome by weariness, she thought of ending her career prematurely. By cutting short the solicitations, she regained the desire to want.
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In Beijing, Perrine wants to chain more mature runs, those that offer her a significant margin of safety without erasing the sensations felt. Its objective, from now on, is to return to the sources, to find the recklessness and the philosophy which characterized the pioneers of the discipline. In December 2020, she confided her reluctance to our daily colleagues West France. “China comes out of my eyes. I find it completely crazy that you can go skiing in resorts like that! Perrine dreams of lighter Olympics, less policed, more respectful of the environment. In Tignes, the Indian, who celebrated his 75th birthday, will no doubt appreciate the girl’s outspokenness.