Cecile Landi says Simone Biles "has opened my eyes on a lot of things"
The 1996 Olympian-turned-coach talks about never backing down, the challenges of being a female high performance coach and how working with a global superstar has changed her perspective.
Artistic Gymnastics
Cecile Landi loves a challenge.
When the Olympic gymnast from Atlanta 1996 - then known by her maiden name Cecile Canqueteau - decided to move from coaching at the French National Training Centre to the United States in 2004, she had no shortage of doubters including the head of the training centre.
"When I left France, they told me I was going to fail. I was not going to make it. I was going to come back crying and asking for my job back. And here I am 18 years later,” said Landi in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com. “That was one of the motivations, too. I was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no. I’m going to prove you wrong. I’m going to show you. I’ll do it.’
“It was not easy,” she continued. “It is not easy.”
It wasn’t the first time this official had doubted her.
“When I was 13, she wanted to kick me out because she didn’t think I had the potential to continue my career,” recalled Landi. “And, so, she put me with the Chinese coaches in a way to say, ‘You know what, it’s going to be too hard so you’re going to quit so I won’t have to kick you out.’”
“That was the first one,” she continued. “And well, I didn’t quit. I retired later on, but I went beyond what she thought I could do.”
Coming to America
When Canqueteau and boyfriend (now husband) Laurent Landi left to coach in the United States, instead of returning to France wanting her old job back, she flourished.
The couple started their American journey in Oklahoma at the Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy and then at two different gyms in Texas.
She worked with two U.S. stand outs, Alyssa Baumann and Madison Kocian, at WOGA Gymnastics in Dallas, the gym that saw Olympic champions Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin achieve greatness.
Under Landi’s tutelage, Baumann was part of the 2014 U.S. World Championships team that won gold, while Kocian won two world team titles, a world uneven bars title and Olympic gold and silver medals at Rio 2016.
Despite the success, Landi never harboured dreams of becoming a coach while growing up.
“I actually wanted to become a PT (physical therapist) because as many gymnasts, I had a lot of PT to do throughout my career,” she explained with a smile. “I went to the university in Marseille, did my first two years, and after two years, you kind of branch out into PE (physical education) teaching, more PT or professional coaching.
“The national team training centre in Marseille called me and went, ‘I think you’ll be a great coach? Do you want to do that?’” she continued. “I said, ‘Oh, no, heck no. I don’t want to. I don’t want to coach.’”
But an offer to pay for her schooling eventually convinced her to give it a shot. The rest, as they say, is history.
Cecile Landi: "I feel complete as an athlete."
Landi credits that education for shaping her as a coach, noting the importance of seemingly small details like how you approach correcting your athletes.
“Luckily for us in France, we truly do have that degree that teaches us psychology… and how negative comments are really impactful,” said Landi.
Her coaching education is one of the differences Landi notes between France and the U.S., where instructors might not receive the same training.
She says she’s tried to combine those learnings with her experience as an athlete, taking things she liked from her competitive career and discarding others that didn’t work for her.
Landi’s dedication to her athletes is clear. She gets the same joy from watching her athletes win Level 10 state championships as she does guiding them to the Olympic Games.
Her competitive career, she says, was more than she could have ever imagined, leaving her completely fulfilled and ready to help another generation of young women achieve more than they could imagine.
“I was from such a small town, such a small gym, that just already making the national team and going to worlds… I did not win medals, but that wasn’t about that. It was about the experience and the growth and going to the Games,” said Landi of her athletic achievements.
"I feel complete as an athlete, so when I moved to coaching, it was more like, 'How can I help them feel the same way? What can I do to help them accomplish their dreams?' That’s what makes me happy."
It has not all been plain sailing, however, with Landi acknowledging the many challenges women in her field face.
Those include starting a family.
In 2007, Landi worked right up until the day before she gave birth to daughter Juliette - who represented France in diving at last December's Junior World Championships - and returned to work three or four days after.
Not because she did not have maternity leave, which many Americans lack, but because of her sense of obligation.
Her sister, who still lives in France, could not believe the turnaround.
“My sister had two kids, and she was able to stop [working] a couple of weeks before, a lot of weeks after,” said Landi. “So, she was like, ‘You’re crazy going back to work so fast.’ I did have a choice because I know I would have been paid, but I also didn’t have one.
“When you have 35 kids, I don’t know who will come and coach my 35 kids if I’m not around,” she continued, later adding, “I think mentally we can handle a lot more than some of the guys around.”
Simone Biles brings new pressure, perspective
Her female perspective, she says, has helped in her career especially as her view of her role has changed.
Landi’s star pupil Simone Biles, whom she and husband Laurent started coaching in 2017, highlighted the importance of the mental health of her athletes when she made the decision to prioritise her mental health over competing at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
“I think we try to listen a little bit more to the athletes because mental health was not real in the nineties for me. It was, ‘You are lazy, you just don’t want to do it,’ or any kind of things like that they would say to us,” Landi recalled.
"Mental health became more and more [important] in the past five years, I would say, with the scandal in USA Gymnastics and all those athletes that were abused, that’s when we saw that it did affect them way more than we ever thought.
"Talking with Simone and with the girls… I just want them to know that they can tell me anything. I watch the body language a lot, I try to see. Then, I ask, 'What’s going on? Are you OK? Do you want to talk? Do we need to talk and take a day? That’s fine.'
"I think it’s more on a daily basis, being mindful and careful on the girls’ body language. We see them every day, so we can tell when something is off.
“It has definitely been a big change, and Simone has opened my eyes on a lot of things,” she concluded.
Working with Biles, Landi says, also generated pressure unlike any she had faced previously in her coaching career.
"When we started coaching Simone, I would say that we had a different kind of pressure because everyone was waiting for us, maybe, to mess up. ‘How can you get her better? How can you make her better?’ I don’t know, but she can do more. And she did."
It should surprise no one that Landi didn’t back down from that challenge with Biles, just like she didn’t back down when she was told she’d fail as a coach in America.
That determination is what she hopes any women hoping to follow in her coaching footsteps can take from her career.
"It’s really… just don’t be afraid. People are going to tell you, 'No'. People will tell you can’t do it,” she said of her advice for aspiring female coaches. “It’s just keep pushing yourself. Do what you believe you can and you’ll make it happen.”