Published on : 27/05/2022 – 18:27
Since she was 12, Léolia Jeanjean had been promised a golden future in tennis. But an injury forced her, as a teenager, to stop everything. Today, more than ten years after leaving the top level, the 26-year-old Frenchwoman is in the running for the 3rd round of Roland-Garros when it is the first Grand Slam tournament of her career.
The story of Léolia Jeanjean, who is about to play the third round of Roland-Garros on Saturday May 28 against Irina-Camélia Bégu, resembles an American fairy tale: the incredible comeback of a former tennis prodigy who lost everything.
“I could never have imagined that”: after her victory in the 2nd round against the Czech Karolina Pliskova, 8th in the world (6-2, 6-2), the 26-year-old Frenchwoman struggled to achieve. “I thought I would be eliminated in the first round in two sets, and now I have just beaten one of the ten best players in the world, it’s just totally crazy!”.
Returning to the professional circuit at the end of 2020, Léolia Jeanjean, 227th in the world, is the first lowest-ranked player to beat a member of the women’s top 10 at Roland-Garros since 1988. A performance that shows how far Léolia Jeanjean has come from afar.
tennis prodigy
As she began to hit the yellow ball at the age of six, Léolia Jeanjean was quickly cataloged as a tennis prodigy. At the age of twelve, the National Training Center at Roland-Garros (CNE) assigned her a full-time coach – a first – while the young girl had already signed a seven-figure contract with Nike. She spent a year at the CNE and even hit the ball regularly with Gilles Simon: “I was his mascot”, says Léolia Jeanjean in the Team. In 2009, at the age of 14, she was already playing her second Roland-Garros junior tournament, and the question arose of letting her jump into the deep end.
Imagine. A 13-year-old girl glimpses paradise and finds herself in hell, + knees + dreams + money. But Léolia Jeanjean makes new wings and 12 years + later, she returns to the sky of all possibilities. There are journeys that define champions ❤️ pic.twitter.com/1Tw7tfXq8P
— Benoit Maylin (@BenoitMaylin) May 26, 2022
But at 14, his knee gives way. Triple dislocation of the patella, a year of rehabilitation, then a relapse. The beautiful story ends abruptly. The sponsors, the French Tennis Federation, all those who extolled it, are suddenly absent subscribers.
His parents advise him to focus on studies, saying there will always be time to come back to tennis later. She gets the baccalaureate by correspondence. Then she went into exile in the United States, where she obtained a “license in sociology, a license in criminal justice and a master’s degree in wealth investment finance. Many things that have nothing to do with each other, but it’s like my life: it goes a little in all directions“, she laughs today.
Without however forgetting the darker moments. “It was really hard, I had really difficult times when I thought I would never play tennis again,” recalls Léolia Jeanjean. “It still took me a while to get over it all and use it as a strength to come back.”
That year, she therefore started from zero or almost, with no one to help her. “I lived on RSA (Active Solidarity Income) and APL (Personalized Housing Assistance). (…) I put all the money I had in a week-long tournament and if that happened well, it paid me an extra week, if it went badly, I didn’t play for two months because it was financially impossible”, recalled Léolia Jeanjean recently.
But on the ITF circuit (second division of tennis), the feelings return, the results too. While she is 1,180th in the world at the WTA, she gives herself two years to reach the top 240 and thus win the lucrative invitations for the qualifications for the Grand Slam tournaments. A few good performances later and a start to the season in the form of a cannonball (27 wins for nine losses), she moved up to 227th in the world. And Roland-Garros gives him the benefit of a wild card for the 2022 tournament.
Jeanjean: “The prize money changes my life. I will be able to have a coach, a structure, go abroad, do tours, that changes everything.” The 3rd round will earn him 125,800 euros. She recently confided that she had experienced RSA and APL. #RolandGarros
— Tennis Magazine (@TennisMagazine1) May 26, 2022
At the end of this Roland-Garros, she is guaranteed to integrate at least the Top 150. And thanks to her presence in the third round of Roland-Garros, she is also guaranteed to receive at least 125,800 euros. Enough to finance several months of tennis and to consider more calmly the continuation of his second career.
However, Léolia Jeanjean prefers not to think about what’s next: “I’m living in the moment, I’m not in euphoria, I’m enjoying it. (…) Finally, I’m where I’ve always wanted to be from a very young age”.
With AFP
