Eternal journey of two trampoline players from Seynois, world champion
They still find it hard to believe. But this is true nonetheless. Gabriel Chevalier and Jamie Leonard on Saturday night in Bulgaria took the title of World Champion in the Hopes category (17-21 years old) in the synchronized event.
Exceptional performance by the athletes from Seynoise Trampoline Gymnastics Entente (EGTS) who did not expect to attend such a ceremony. If they had the ambition to rise among the eight finalists, they secretly dreamed of courting the best players and why not merge the podium.
But they never imagined covering themselves with gold, especially since the best countries in the world were among the 32 duos at the start of the competition.
9.30 in the final!
Moreover, the American, Japanese and New Zealand doubles finished in the top three at the end of the qualifying rounds. Gabriel and Jamie were ambushed in the bottom five, thus advancing to the final where all the counters reset.
This is when the exception occurs. The two friends from the Léry complex, in La Seyne, do a free exercise of 14 difficulty points with an impressive synchronized score of 9.30! Almost perfect synchronization that allows them to get ahead of the New Zealanders and the Portuguese, who complete the podium after the fall of the American favorites.
“It’s pretty crazy though!”
“I don’t know if we realized what just happened, but it’s greatsays Gabriel Chevalier (17). This culminates hundreds of hours of training all together, and erases my frustration with the individual event where a damn point in the rules denies me a final [9e la veille, Ndlr]. Great to share this with Jimmy, “Fivi” [Lucien Viviani leur entraîneur] But also with our whole family, as our parents made the trip. »
The sentiment is also evident in Jamie Leonard (20), a rookie at this level: “Winning my first World Cup is pretty crazy! On the day of the drop we got the workout we needed and obviously great. We can say we played Marseille one day in our honour.” In fact, unlike in team sports where the national anthem is chanted during the teams’ introductions, in most individual sports you have to win an international title to have the honor of hearing it. Suffice it to say, it’s rare. But the Senwa are now part of this closed circle. They are not about to forget it.
There is no such performance for 30 years
If Seynoise Trampoline Gymnastics Entente has always been a major resource for athletes to fuel the ranks of the French team, we have to go back thirty years to find traces of such performance within the club.
Sebastien Leiva and Sebastien Bottaso were the last 100% Senua pair to win the world title, twice in 1990 (Germany) and 1992 (New Zealand).
Women’s pair Aurore Muzi and Stéphanie Mondou were also crowned in South Africa in 1999, while Fabrice Henick won the senior team title in 1996 with the Blues in Vancouver (Canada).
Recently, in 2019 in Tokyo, Alexis Chevalier also won the synchronized world title in the Hope class, but he teamed up with Vannetais Julian Chartier.
All these athletes passed through the hands of Lucien Viviani. This famous coach is also the president of the Seynois Club and the Var Gymnastics Committee.
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