She coached Simone Biles. Next up: Reviving a dormant NCAA dynasty.
Cecile Landi has done it all at the elite level. Now she’s headed to the University of Georgia to be the co-head coach.
PARIS — Cecile Landi ended her coaching marathon at the Olympics by guiding the world’s best gymnast to the final flourish of her redemptive comeback. Landi had counseled Simone Biles three years ago in Tokyo, where she withdrew from nearly every event because of a mental block, and then helped her return to these Games and win four medals.
When Biles competed at her first Olympics in 2016, she already had risen to the top of her sport. Whether Biles could get better seemed uncertain. But as Biles continued on, with Cecile and Laurent Landi as her new coaches, she kept climbing. Biles mastered innovative elements so difficult that no woman had ever attempted them in a competition, and her all-around dominance made her nearly unstoppable. For Biles, a podium-worthy floor routine marked the satisfying end to her Paris run. And for Cecile Landi, it brought another highlight in a career that will soon take a dramatic turn.
Landi is trading elite gymnastics — the world she has long known, both as a 1996 Olympian for France and as a coach — for the NCAA. Landi is heading to the University of Georgia to be the co-head coach tasked with revitalizing a program with historic success but recent struggles.
“It’s really insane,” Landi said before the competition began, “so I’m trying to not cry.”
Landi has coached multiple Olympians and world champions, plus dozens of athletes who went on to compete in college. Top gymnasts from around the country flocked to World Champions Centre, the club owned by Biles’s parents, in large part to be coached by the Landis. Everything had been going so well for Landi. And in a way, that’s why it was time to move on.
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