Four EM Medals at 16: Elena Colas Ahead of Her First World Championships in Rotterdam

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Four EM Medals at 16: Elena Colas Ahead of Her First World Championships in Rotterdam.

Four medals at a European Championship, at 16 years old – Elena Colas played the kind of season this summer that other artistic gymnasts dream of for a lifetime. For her, it's above all one thing: an exceptional state.

In an interview with «L'Équipe», the Frenchwoman looks back on the months after her European Championship coup. «J'essaie de me persuader que je suis normale», she says – in English: she tries to convince herself that she is normal. That this has long since stopped being true is shown by her schedule through October 25.

CET ÉTÉ – that was the keyword. At this year's European Championships, Colas, barely 16 years old, secured four medals and catapulted herself into the European top tier. «Sa vie s'accélérer ces derniers mois», L'Équipe writes: her life has rapidly accelerated in recent months – between newfound fame, new expectations, and a scheduling pressure that could hardly be smaller for a teenager.

Four medals, and suddenly nothing is "normal" anymore

What this mix does to a 16-year-old's everyday life is easy to imagine. Suddenly interviews, suddenly headlines, suddenly requests that blow up the previous rhythm. That Colas herself puts it with the sentence "I try to convince myself that I am normal" sounds like the honest admission of a teenager who feels her daily life shifting completely.

Her sporting new start also includes the coaching change («changement d'entraîneur»). Who will coach her going forward and how the break with the old team went is deliberately left open in the teaser – what is clear is that the change fell right in the middle of the hot phase before her first World Championships.

Distance learning, Lycée and a body that won't cooperate

In France, at her age, the Lycée is normally what's next. Colas does school remotely, «à distance» – a solution top athletes often choose, but one that adds extra pressure to an already tight training routine.

And then there's the «pépin physique», the physical problem currently holding her back. What exactly it is doesn't become clear from the teaser. What is clear: she has to get it under control before Rotterdam, otherwise her first World Championships will become a race against her own injury.

Rotterdam as a litmus test after the European Championship coup

From October 17 to 25, the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships take place in Rotterdam – Colas's very first. After four medals at the European Championships, she arrives not as an unknown, but as someone the competition has to reckon with.

J'essaie de me persuader que je suis normale.

At the same time, a first World Championships for a 16-year-old is always also a bit of a learning year. Even if her body cooperates, the competition is a different one than at a continental championship. If Colas delivers in Rotterdam what she hinted at in the summer, then the sentence about "being normal" is finally a thing of the past – then she has arrived at the world elite.