“It went quickly, I feel like Pyeongchang was last week”. From the height of her 23 years, Perrine Laffont does not lose her smile when she arrives at Zhangjiakou, northwest of Beijing. Four years after her Olympic title in mogul skiing in South Korea, the Pyrenean is already advancing towards her third Olympic Games with a clear objective in mind: to be the first woman to double the lead at the Games in mogul skiing. Except that this time, the Frenchwoman arrives as the big favorite: “I’ve been playing at the top of my sport for 4 years. Being able to hold on to the length is satisfying.”
Since her South Korean coronation in 2018, Perrine Laffont has indeed rolled her bump in her discipline, becoming the woman to beat by winning almost everything there is to win in mogul skiing: four crystal globes of ski moguls (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021) two big freestyle skiing globes (2019, 2020), two world titles in parallel (2019) and individual (2021), each time leaving crumbs for his opponents. An example ? His 2019-2020 vintage, punctuated by 8 victories in 10 World Cup rounds. Like the greatest, Perrine Laffont has made the exceptional banal, victory the norm.
“My status has changed over the years, the results. I remain the same skier. I am here to ski, technical performance. Everything around does not concern me.”
Perrine Laffont, Olympic champion in mogul skiing in 2018at a press conference
The only Pyrenean in the tricolor delegation, the Ariégeoise has come a long way. In the spring of 2019, a year after the Games – and despite a first big freestyle skiing crystal globe – Perrine Laffont is seriously considering hanging up her skis at 21. “There was a year when I wanted to stop my career”, confirms the athlete, who then goes through a burn-out.
Tired by the pressure of the results, by the media frenzy, the young woman loses the flame. “Finding yourself there two years later with a smile, and still motivated to do great things on the track, it’s a small victory”, she appreciates from the Olympic village.
To rediscover the pleasure of skiing – which she has placed at the center of everything since -, “Pépette” or “Pep” – her nicknames – started from the base: “It went through the love of sport and trying to build a daily life, a cocoon around me that makes me feel good without feeling the pressure of results, the expectation around me. These are things that inhibit my enjoyment of skiing. I don’t ski to please the media… I ski because I like it, I like traveling and doing the Olympics.”
Surrounded by a mental trainer since 2013, but also by a lawyer and a press officer, Perrine Laffont has done everything possible to refocus her attention on skiing. It is also after this recalibration that she signs her best season, in 2019-2020. But for a few months, the ambient serenity has however been put to the test for the Habs, more and more heckled by competitors in full progression, in particular the Australian Jakara Anthony and the Japanese Anri Kawamura.
“Competition allows me to raise my level because you have to do a perfect run, it pushes me to my limits, that’s good. It makes me evolve as a skier, I progress even more thanks to that.”
Perrine Laffontat a press conference
Jostled by these adversaries, Perrine Laffont even – something rare – lost her footing on December 17 during the stage of the World Cup in mogul skiing at Alpe d’Huez, the first in France for four years. In the middle of the second section of bumps, “Pépette” fell heavily on his back and head. More fear than harm. Laffont then quickly set the record straight on the following stages, taking over the lead in the general classification of the Mogul Skiing World Cup.
Locked in her own bubble in Beijing, where she cut off her phone and social networks before the first training sessions, the queen of moguls does not hide her ambitions, even if she speaks of pleasure above all: “Of course if I leave with a medal it’s better than without. (…) I don’t feel like I have all eyes on me. I’m pretty good, I’m concentrating on what I have to do on the track. The rest is secondary.”
On the Genting Snow Park track, which she says resembles that of Pyeongchang (a happy omen?), Perrine Laffont will set off in search of a historic Olympic double in women’s mogul skiing. An adventure that she will probably tell in one of her vlogs on YouTube, with her tricolor nails, whose update is already planned: “I could add gold on my nails after the race, I brought the gold polish (laughs).”