“Body and brain were pulling”, Ariège skier Perinne Laffont returns after a one-year break
|2018 Olympic mogul ski champion Perrine Laffont is returning to competition this winter, after a blank season to spare “body and brain that were struggling”, a “rather late decision”, she explains.
How did your decision come about ?
The decision was quite late. In May, when we usually start training again, I still had a few bouts of fatigue. But I needed to do some sport. With my coach, my physical trainer, we said to ourselves: “We don't put pressure on ourselves to come back and be ready in December. You just start training again, you come back with the group, you do the weeks of preparation and we see how your body copes.” It happened little by little. Getting back into sport gave me a bit of vitality. On skis, it went really well during the training camp in Tignes this summer. Ushuaïa (until the end of September) was a decisive training camp: this is where we start the full runs again, where we see the physical and mental form, to be maintained over three weeks. It went very well and so, it was very recently that we said to ourselves that all the lights were green.
Head down
What do you remember from your year off ?
It was a good year to understand myself. I had been in a spiral for ten years, with my head down, never looking up. There were always new goals. This time off allowed me to analyze everything that had happened, to digest it too, because my body and brain were struggling after these ten years. It was also a new understanding of my needs: I won everything in my sport, we asked ourselves the question of what was going to be next, what I was going to want to do after this year. I have a slightly clearer vision of the future, of what I want and need. The year has gone by quickly. It feels like it was yesterday that I announced that I was taking a break.
A year ago at the same time, you explained that you needed freshness. Have you found any again? ?
I think so. The batteries were at zero at the end of the (previous) winter. What I managed to create was the lack. The lack of doing sports, of going to train, of going to training, of going to training, of going skiing, of doing moguls; the lack of competition, of adrenaline. That was also what I was looking for through this year off: to create the lack. If the lack did not come back, it meant that it was potentially over. But there, little by little, the lack came back. That's how I nourished myself these last few months. I wouldn't have started competing again if I hadn't (felt) the lack.
2030 is in the back of my mind
Saying stop, have you considered it ?
There were big phases of fatigue. Would my body be able to come back ? We didn't really know. In high-level sport, you have to be open to all possibilities. We didn't know if my head was going to be okay. Maybe the lack wasn't going to come back or a project was going to come up and I was going to want to get involved…
How are you approaching the upcoming season ?
The World Cup circuit is going to be very dense this winter: almost twenty races, with a lot of travel, China, Kazakhstan, Georgia… I think we're going to play it very strategically. For the moment, I can't say more because, quite honestly, I don't know. But the big point of the season will be the World Championships in March. I really want to arrive in good shape. We'll have to build up momentum. I'll be at the opening of the World Cup in Ruka, Finland. And then, we'll see as we go along.
The 2026 Olympics are obvious in your head ?
Of course. And 2030 (in the French Alps, editor's note) in the back of your mind too. We will already take stock after 2026. But I was able to experience the Paris Games from the inside this summer. It was great. I experienced Games in South Korea (2018), China (2022), Russia (2014), they were not the most spectacular, if you can say. Games in France, I have no doubt that it will be grandiose. It makes you want to go.