Kim Clavel | Growing up in Cuban discomfort

“There, can you hear me? », says Kim Clavel on the line. Where she is in Havana, finding a network is not easy and we experience this with her when, after seven minutes of broken sentences and long delays between responses, the line cuts out.

New attempt, no response. Too bad, we end the interview with voice messages, a game to which the always generous pugilist plays without flinching.

Anyway, the network is probably Kim Clavel’s last worry at the moment. In Havana, where she chose to do a training camp for a week until February 12, the Quebec boxer lives in total discomfort.

“Here you put yourself in misery. It’s poverty. There is no glamour, no advanced bags, no gadgets in the gyms. It’s boxing, really boxing. »

There, she resides in what she describes as a “slum” and sleeps on a mattress that she describes as “just springs”. “I don’t have drinking water, I have to run all the time trying to find bottles of water and it’s not that simple. There is no food. I brought rice cakes, cans of tuna. I brought protein and things like that. But there are lots of ants… everywhere. »

“You walk, it’s hot,” she continues. Even though you put ice in your water bottle, it’s melted after 10 minutes and you drink hot water throughout your workout. »

In other words, “it’s uncomfortable all the time,” and that’s exactly what she wanted. To our spontaneous question that sounded something like “are you crazy?” », Clavel replies: “Maybe a little! »

Since arriving in Cuba, where she is training for her next fight on April 4, Clavel has been writing. Her moods, slices of life… The few images she sends us from her notebook allow us to better understand what she is experiencing. The pages are titled: “Adaptation”, “Boredom”, “Boxing”…

“Starting again in the luxury of Canada hurts, then in the discomfort of Cuba it’s a martyrdom. Necessary ? We will see. Comfort, I will find it in my head, because nothing else can compensate,” she writes in her page on discomfort.

A little further on, in his page titled “Dia Buena!” »: “It’s crazy how I hate waiting, I want everything to work right fucking now but that’s not life, sometimes you have to learn to love what you don’t like. The coolest thing here is that I have no one to complain to so I continue without flinching and finally it works, a good life lesson to bring back to Quebec. »

Great thoughts

We are starting to get to know Kim Clavel; If there’s one who doesn’t do things by halves, it’s her. After his last heartbreaking defeat at the hands of Evelin Nazarena Bermúdez by split decision on October 7, the athlete spent three months without boxing or training.

We will remember all the chaos with the Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux (RACJ) which followed his fight. Its promoter, Yvon Michel, has just been suspended for two months for the disgraceful events that occurred after the defeat.

The boxer also received, during the weeks following the fight, a letter telling her that her license could be withdrawn if she were to make other comments like those she made against judge Benoit Roussel after her defeat. .

During the last three months, therefore, Clavel has not boxed. She hasn’t trained. In fact, she was practically incapable of doing so. “The only time I sweated was because I ate a pizza and it was too hot,” she says. I didn’t exercise, nothing, nothing, nothing. I ate, I slept, I worked again as a nursing assistant. »

In three months, she went through several stages, from frustration to pain, through anger and then, “quietly”, acceptance. She thought about retirement, too. “Maybe it’s over for me, I faced the best and I was missing a little something,” she thought.

She needed to “efface herself, to get out of the mapto be proud [d’elle] for something other than boxing.

Once in the acceptance phase, his thoughts transformed. Bitterness has made its way through.

“Crime, it can’t end like this,” she thought. I’m at this level of these girls, there’s not much missing, so I’m going to roll up my sleeves, I’m going to go to training camp, I’m going to go see what happens, but I’m going to put myself less pressure, I’ll box for fun. »

After 15 years of training with the same team, she wanted a temporary change of environment, to “just be with [elle-même] “. She opted for Havana, with the support of her coaches in Quebec. There, she notably does sparring with members of the Cuban national team.

“It’s a super enriching, unique experience. I think even if you’re not a boxer, you should get into trouble like that at least once in your life. I can tell you that when I come back to Montreal, I will find myself fat and lucky to have everything I have. »

Next fight

On April 4, Clavel will return to the ring. Don’t get me wrong: she doesn’t need to regain her confidence. Her confidence is still there, because she delivered a solid duel last October. This next fight will rather allow her to find her bearings, she explains.

At a press conference on Thursday, promoter Yvon Michel mentioned that his boxer had regained “the sacred fire, his enthusiasm”. ” I think that [les derniers mois] him [ont] makes you realize that you can’t put all your eggs in one basket, that life is more than a boxing match, he added. It made him want to come back. »

Despite the questions, the challenges, the emotions, Kim Clavel’s objective remains the same as a few months ago. Should this be specified? Let’s go for it, why not: “I want to become world champion, nothing less. »

“The path is not easy to get to the top of the mountain. I already did it once; the view is very, very beautiful. I want to see that again,” she says, apologizing for the motorbikes that can be heard passing in the background.

With that, we still wish him some discomfort, but a little more cold water. As she writes so well in one of the pages of her diary, “humans adapt, if they want to”.