“It's an extraordinary human adventure.
We are all in trouble, so we make great encounters, as in sport ”.
Maxine Eouzan thus sums up “Koh-Lanta” and her experience as a top-level ex-athlete.
This inhabitant of Champigny-sur-Marne is one of the twenty adventurers of the new season, broadcast from this Friday at 9:05 pm on TF 1 and presented by Denis Brogniart.
Sport is “in the family” for Maxine.
His father, Pascal Eouzan, is a former world champion in tumbling, a kind of acrobatic gymnastics.
His brother Alexis is also a former athlete.
A family story that becomes a vocation for Maxine.
“From the age of 3, I was already on the floors doing somersaults and jumping everywhere.
When I was 9, I started high level in acrobatic gymnastics, and that was it.
"
Maxine introduces herself before the show
#KohLanta
🙋♀️ Maxine, 25 years old
🏊♀ “Koh Lanta is my Olympic Games to me”
📺 RDV 12/03 from 9:05 pm on @ TF1 pic.twitter.com/7ePU8NPSc1
- Koh-Lanta (@ KohLantaTF1) March 6, 2021
All her schooling, Maxine did it in the Val-de-Marne, first at the Sainte-Thérèse school, in Champigny, then at the Montalembert college in Nogent-sur-Marne.
She then joined Insep (National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance), located in the Bois de Vincennes.
His closest friends still live in the department today.
Maxine did acrobatic gymnastics until she was 15 and finished fifth at the European Championships.
Because of the stoppage of her two teammates, she is forced to find a new discipline.
After reflection, it will be diving, an activity adapted for former gymnasts.
From Champigny to the Rio Olympics (or almost)
The Campinoise is spotted by one of the coaches of Insep who was looking for young talents.
She enjoys diving and is training for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
But a few months before, she was "fed up" and she fell for it: "You should know that sport is not always funny.
When we say that we are a top athlete, people think it's great.
We travel, we do a lot of cool stuff, but there is a perverse side: hours and hours of training, where we really shit every day.
"
The last year of her training at Insep, she began to take "a lot of bowls and dishes that scared me" and to have blockages.
She understands that the dive is making her unhappy and decides to stop.
The desire to "move on, enjoy life, without sport," she says, laughing.
A childhood dream
She has since devoted herself to sports journalism.
She hosts a sports program on "Sport en France" and she intends to continue on this path, perhaps by setting up her own program.
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Stopping the dive was decisive for the rest of his journey.
“I am a competitor, I do not know how to finish with a failure.
From that moment on, I never managed to turn the page on sport, it made me a little sick.
I had to challenge myself every year.
I thought of
Koh-Lanta
because it's a show that I have been watching since I was little and that I dream of doing.
"
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Maxine therefore decides to take the plunge by applying to “Koh-Lanta”, first in 2018 and then a second time this year: “I said to myself:
Why not
, for the sporting side, for the adrenaline, the challenge, and for the survival side.
For her, "Koh-Lanta" means putting yourself to the test, giving up your comfort for the unknown.
The adventure brought her "serenity and perspective", testifies Maxine.
“It helped me stop thinking.
This is my big problem in life, I am someone who thinks a lot, all the time.
I try to analyze everything.
Koh-Lanta allowed me to clear things up a bit, and also to discover myself even more, because I was going into the unknown.
I learned to be a little more patient and to gain self-confidence.
"
"I must have done 2000 jogs on the banks of the Marne since I was very little"
Once back in France, after this adventure in French Polynesia, Maxine oscillates between her parents' house in Champigny and the Marseille apartment of her boyfriend, a top athlete.
Torn, she confides: “I love Marseille, but I can't see myself leaving Val-de-Marne.
"
In love with her department of origin, her best childhood memories are “all the gym sessions at the Champigny gymnasium”, when she and her brother went there, accompanied by their father.
Maxine then became a regular jogger on the banks of the Marne.
"I must have done 2000 since I was very little."
"The 94, I really would not see myself living elsewhere".
Except, of course, during the 35 days of "Koh-Lanta", "the Secret Weapons".
Maxine will comfortably watch the launch of the adventure this Friday evening, with her brother and her boyfriend.