In 2022, free-style skier Tess Ledeux collected the podiums. A golden double in January in the big air and slopestyle events at the Winter X Games, the flagship competition for extreme sports. A silver medal, the following month, at the Olympic Games (OG) in Beijing. A victory as soon as her season resumed in the World Cup, at the end of October, in Switzerland… A few days before the round of Copper Mountain, in the United States, in mid-December – where she finished sixth in big air -, La Plagnarde s is ready for The world in the balance sheet game.
What personal assessment do you make of the year 2022?
It was the most beautiful year of my life, the richest emotionally. She brought me a lot of things between the Olympic Games, the X Games… Years like that, we don’t often have them, so I tried to live it at 3,000%.
In Beijing, you dominated the Olympic big air final. But everything changes on the last jump, when the Chinese Eileen Gu performs a double cork 1620, a figure that you were until then the only athlete to have attempted and succeeded in competition. What did you say to yourself at that moment?
I didn’t know that at the time! I was leaving one bib after her, so I was in the starting gate and didn’t have time to see what she had done. I just heard the noise, the announcer, and realized that she had walked past me. It was quite disturbing because, since I didn’t know what she had done, I also didn’t know what I could do to regain the lead. In terms of timing, it was awful: I had thirty seconds left before leaving for my last jump. My coach and I found ourselves helpless. It was very special to live, as much for him as for me.
We saw you collapsed on arrival…
Like everyone else, I saw that I hadn’t gone far from gold. At the time, it was difficult and I couldn’t really understand my emotions. I have an Olympic medal, but I also know that it could have been of another color: was I happy or disappointed? Afterwards, I managed to enjoy it. I said to myself : “It’s an Olympic medal, it’s incredible and I will have it all my life…” I could have totally cracked during these Games and that’s not what happened at all. For that, I am proud of myself.
The conditions of this edition were very special, in particular due to a drastic anti-Covid protocol. What memory do you keep?
What was weird about these Games is that it felt like they started three weeks before the Opening Ceremony! At that time, we were in isolation, because there was this pressure not to catch Covid-19. It was really very hard to manage. When we left, we were already almost tired of having had to be so careful the previous month, of not having been able to enjoy our family, our friends…
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