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.
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.
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“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.
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“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.”
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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.
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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.
