It has been a six-year-long journey, but this year, both my boyfriend Alexis Charrier and I reached the goal of becoming World Champions of swimrun: I did it with Desirée Andersson and Alexis with Matthieu Poullain. Even if we didn’t race together as a team this year, our teamwork and partnership over the years made the 2024 victory possible.
This is my story…
I started doing artistic gymnastics when I was 5 years old, continuing until I was 18. Artistic gymnastics include floor exercises that can be really tough on the body. After two ankle injuries I was really struggling to come back. After the third one I had enough, I decided to stop. I switched to another type of gymnastics (more focused on rings and other equipment). This training was less demanding and I was able to focus more on school and at the same time reach the very top level, competing at a national level in Switzerland. At some point I felt like I had reached my maximum level in gymnastics and started looking for a new challenge. That's when I found endurance sports! I could do my cycling, running and swimming before school or during my lunch break. Studying to be a PE teacher, I knew I needed my body for work, so swapping gymnastics for endurance sports was also a way to try to stay away from more serious injuries. In 2018, I was training for an Ironman and the coach I had at the time suggested I try swimrun. It is a good way to improve your endurance, he said! I signed up for some races with his girlfriend (who was also training for triathlon) aiming to do Ötillö Engadin together.
Meeting Alexis in 2019
I had qualified for 2018 Ötillö World Championships with my Swiss friend in Engadin but three weeks before the race she got injured. I started looking for a new partner and the only one brave enough to race with someone unknown was Cassandra Eliasson, a Swedish open water swimmer. Cassandra didn’t speak much English, so we made a list of a few words and signs to use during the race! We only met the day before the race, could barely communicate but we still managed to finish the race in a pretty good time for two beginners! This was my first time visiting Sweden which meant it was also the very first time I experienced the slippery rocks of the Stockholm archipelago. I was hooked!
After the race, I met some people from Team Envol who encouraged me to join the team. A few weeks later I wrote to Nicolas, Team Envol head coach, asking him to coach me, to help me improve in the sport. I also asked him if he had an athlete whom I could team up with for the 2019 season. Nicolas told me about a French guy who had just joined the team a few weeks earlier. I did a swimrun race with Alexis in March 2019 and we won! After the race we continued talking a lot and decided to do the 2019 season together, trying to qualify for the World Championships. We were really dedicated with the training and could see that we were close to the strongest teams in the mixed category. We participated in Ötillö Utö that year. It was very cold but we managed to arrive sixth in a very strong mixed field. If we worked hard we knew we could do even better. We started to train a lot and that year we finished 10 minutes from the podium in the World Championships. But of course we wanted to do even better! At some point our athletic relationship became something more …
Living AND training together
Sometimes it is hard to have your life partner as your training (and competition) partner. If training is not going well for them and they are not reaching the set goals… you need to be considerate and maybe not talk too much about the great results you are achieving. You also need to be able to switch from training to private mode when you arrive home after a training session. But it is also beautiful to share a passion and to be able to share a lot of adventures together! It is very emotional to race with your life partner -- both good and bad! Sometimes these emotions need to be controlled… It is easier to get angry with your boyfriend during a race if things aren’t going well compared to another race partner. If the race didn’t go well you need to be able to leave this at the door when you come back home.
So many beautiful memories
I have now raced the Ötillö World Championships six times! Once with Cassandra, 3 times with Alexis, once with Eugenie Plane and once with Desirée. I have so many beautiful memories from all these races. The first time was brutal because it was the first but I still enjoyed it so much, even if I could barely walk the day after! It was the first time I experienced this type of pain--I could not walk down the stairs! I got to know Cassandra during the race, a great way to make a new friend. WIth Alexis I had many good moments but also bad ones. Our goal was always set high and we were pushing hard. Fortunately, we always managed to overcome the bad moments and in the end the memories are great. I really suffered during the race I did with Eugenie in 2023, due to the fact that I had a really bad stomach ache from beginning to end. I could not enjoy the course that year and it was really hard mentally after the race. I had trained and invested so much into this race and then I was not able to enjoy any of it.
Never give up
The most beautiful lesson I learned from these six world championships was in 2021, when Alexis and I were the “outsiders”, we were unknown and not at all favorites. In the beginning we were quite far behind the top teams but then we started to catch up. We never lost sight of our goal of the podium and managed to stay motivated. It is a long race, even if you lose a paddle in the first swim you should not give up! It was not fun to tell Alexis I only had one paddle when we exited the first swim! I then focused on staying super close to his feet and increasing the cadence so as not to lose speed. In the end, we ended up swimming faster than the other mixed teams! If you stay focused and positive, a lot is possible! Never give up!
A lot of time and effort has gone into reaching the point where we are now. I wouldn’t call it sacrifice because it is done from passion. It is true that it takes time from other things in life because training takes time! It is beautiful doing it together. We know each other and our dedication. We proved it over the last six years! It is amazing to have achieved this big victory in the same race. Even if we didn’t compete together this year it is a team effort for the two of us. We have been working hard for this since 2019. This year we reached the end of the journey. We don’t have a fixed goal for next year, but we really enjoy doing swimrun so I’m sure there will be plenty of it! We didn’t really talk about it yet, but one thing is for sure, we won't stop swimrun.
Team Envol and the Creator
Nicolas Remires and Team Envol have played a big part over the years. Nicolas was our “creator”! I met Alexis thanks to Nicolas and he dedicated a lot of time teaching us about swimrun. He has been with us on this journey, pushing us both to improve. It has been great to be part of Team Envol. In the beginning we were always behind some of the really good athletes on the team, but it was such a great inspiration for us. It is thanks to Team Envol that we had the chance to have so many adventures and to grow in this sport.
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