A career is sometimes played out on details.
Or more exactly at specific times.
That it is important not to miss.
Antoine Adelisse is well placed to talk about it, he who, like a poker player, bet everything on December 21, 2019 on a Big Air World Cup stage - an extremely spectacular freestyle ski discipline with jumps six feet high and 20 feet long - in Atlanta.
At that time, as he confided to Le Figaro, he had just "hit rock bottom".
Sportingly, with a 33rd place only in Beijing the previous week.
Morally.
And financially.
"I practice a sport which is extremely expensive because unfortunately I cannot train in France", he explains with the smile of someone who knows he has come a long way.
“So I have to be able to pay for my trips to do my competitions, but also quite simply to train.
And in December 2019, when I left for Atlanta, I only had the money to buy the plane ticket, not even a hotel room.
I went on an adventure, betting everything on my result.
I played big because it was my last savings but I got the 2nd place which allowed me, not to make money, but to pay back part of what I owed and to be able to continue the season. "
A silver medal at the X Games in Aspen
A podium like a breath of fresh air.
Or as a "click" in his eyes.
“It allowed me to bounce back in the World Cup and since then, in every competition I have participated in, I have made a podium so it's going really well.
I had to put myself up against the wall to be able to give myself 100% and prove to myself that I was capable of doing quite extraordinary things. "
A rebound materialized just after by a first victory in the World Cup, in Destne (Czech Republic) on February 29, 2020, and, above all, a success at the X Games in Europe.
And the long cut due to the health crisis has not cut off his momentum since since the start of 2021, he has just achieved a 2nd place in the World Cup in Kreischberg (Austria), a silver medal at the X Games in Aspen and a victory at the European Cup stage in Les Arcs last weekend.
At 24, his confidence is at its zenith.
“The X Games are the biggest competition of the year and it's great to have been able to win a medal there.
I would have liked it to be gold but it's quite legendary to be on the podium in Aspen.
The last French Big Air medal there was Candide Thovex about fifteen years ago I believe.
It means a lot to me. ”
“The middle of the mountain is really taking a hit and nothing is certain. We will have to make financial provisions for the coming seasons. ”
Antoine Adelisse
On the financial level, already, the galleys are now behind this young man under contract with the gendarmerie as part of the army of champions, to which belong in particular the skier Tessa Worley or the biathlete Anaïs Bescond.
“Today, financially, I am more stable, he says.
Last season, with my good results (Editor's note: the victory at the X Games Europe earned him, for example, 17,000 euros, once taxes were taken), allowed me to reset the counters to zero, by entering the current season with no debt.
It also allowed me to have new sponsors, which allows me to have much better finances.
That feels good.
But that does not mean that I should play the fool.
I have to anticipate everything.
With the current crisis, the support of sponsors is valuable, but not guaranteed in the long term.
The middle of the mountain really takes a hit and nothing is certain.
We will have to make financial provisions for the coming seasons. ”
A future which notably passes through the Beijing Olympics in one year.
A strong goal for someone who has had two painful failures so far in Sochi (27th in slopestyle) and especially Pyeongchang (30th still in slopestyle).
"I have a huge revenge to take," he says with determination.
“Especially on Pyeongchang, which has been really tough going.
I felt ready, in good shape, with the idea that there was something to do and I passed by.
To succeed in Beijing, I have to keep my current methodology.
Before, I would face before I jumped.
Now I am more relaxed.
I take whatever there is to take and share more with my team.
Maybe it's maturity.
I ended up finding myself going through all these hardships.
I tried to analyze all my periods of competition, all these efforts in training to fall on D-Day. I came to a real point, with the observation that what I was doing was not working. "
A mountain dweller born in ... Nantes
From now on, Adelisse only focuses on the notion of pleasure.
The one who pushed him towards freestyle skiing, he, the native of Nantes, left to discover the mountains at the age of 3 with his parents, hardly familiar with such a universe.
A real plus according to him.
“It really helped me not to have parents who are ski teachers or in the field,” he recalls.
From the moment I started skiing, they never pushed me and they let this natural instinct develop in me to lead me towards this passion.
I often see parents in skiing who push a little too much and try to invest their children when they refuse.
Me, I was immediately attracted by the fact of performing jumps, figs and everything followed naturally afterwards with the sports club of La Plagne. ”
"Skiing really allowed me to go into this fear, into this imbalance and it helped me in my everyday life."
Antoine Adelisse
An attraction that the adopted Plagnard explains as follows: “I am not at all made for routine and in my eyes, the alpine was blue door, red door, blue door… In freestyle, I found total freedom of expression, especially artistic.
I can create movements, do new things in an environment that evolves enormously and very quickly.
Most of the jumps we take today would have been unimaginable ten years ago. ”
Without forgetting, of course, this notion of essential adrenaline: “I love to take up challenges, especially when they really put me in difficulty.
Even today I'm still scared in skiing, but it's still a challenge for me.
I almost go towards this fear to put myself in the hard.
Ditto for free fall.
It terrifies me, but I know I will try someday.
I have this way of working of telling myself that when something scares me, I have to do it.
Skiing really allowed me to go into this fear, into this imbalance and it helped me in my everyday life.
But I am also a real kid.
On skis, I have fun. ”
A kid who also has a strong ecological conscience, and concerns: “We are perhaps one of the last generations to be able to enjoy such snow.
Maybe in ten or twenty years it will become rarer.
I see the glaciers where I trained ten years ago, they have totally changed.
We cannot neglect that.
When we love our sport and know that we are interfering with a meteorological element as important and fragile as snow, it makes us sad to see that it can disappear.
Maybe skiing won't have a very long future. ”
Even if he has the lucidity, too, not to pose as an irreproachable model: “I try to have a speech, realizing what I am doing too.
I am a high level athlete, I travel all over the world, I use airplanes, cars… So I have a look at global warming, strong concerns, but on the other hand, I don't practice a discipline which is necessarily favorable to all this.
It is difficult to say "save the trees!"
if we are there to cut them. "
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