Now that she has mastered it, the uneven bars routine that the gymnast Kaylia Nemour has prepared for the Paris Olympics is a sight to behold: a fluid yet treacherous 30 seconds, so tightly woven with difficulty that it has made her a medal favorite in the event.
When Nemour performed it in competition last month, it produced the highest score recorded on the bars since the Tokyo Olympics. But while she may wow fans in her home country at these Games, she won’t be doing it under the French flag.
Instead, Nemour, 17, is competing for Algeria, the result of a nationality switch last year that followed a protracted dispute with the French gymnastics federation — one that has seen the host nation lose out on perhaps its best chance for a medal on one of the most high-profile stages of the Games.
The conflict that drove a wedge between Nemour and the French federation began with a power struggle over training sites ahead of the Games but has since devolved into accusations of overtraining, caustic exchanges and an 18-month administrative inquiry that concluded last December that the federation was “hounding” Nemour’s home gym in Avoine, a village in western France.
“Kaylia’s dream was to represent her country, France, at the Olympics, like any high-level athlete,” said her mother, Stéphanie Nemour, who is also the president of the gym. “We have distressed gymnasts here who don’t understand why the federation that is supposed to nurture them is acting this way.”
Through a spokeswoman, the federation declined to comment on its dispute with Nemour and her coaches or on her split with the federation.
Nemour’s road to the French national team once looked exceptionally smooth. While many aspiring gymnasts have to move or commute long distances to train for elite careers, the Nemours happened to settle less than a mile from Avoine Beaumont Gymnastique, a gym where Marc and Gina Chirilcenco have coached a steady stream of top gymnasts over the past 30 years.
Her potential was obvious from a young age, according to Marc Chirilcenco. “She has exceptional air awareness, and for a long time, she simply had fun with it,” he said. In 2020 and 2021, while still a junior, Nemour beat her senior peers at several French events. In 2021, she became the national champion in the uneven bars.
Around the same time, the French gymnastics federation announced new training guidelines. Instead of choosing their training location, all Olympic hopefuls would be required to train full-time under the umbrella of the National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance either in Vincennes, a suburb of Paris, or in St.-Étienne, in southeastern France.
For the Olympic hopefuls training in Avoine, a small group that included Nemour, the edict was a significant blow. Nemour said that leaving her hometown “wasn’t even an option.”
“I’ve been here pretty much since I was born,” she said. “My home is within walking distance from the gym. I’m really happy with my coaches. Why would I leave?”
A parallel issue added fuel to the fire. In 2021, Nemour was found to have advanced osteochondritis, an inflammation that is often linked to repetitive stress placed on a joint. Nemour’s surgeon opted to perform bone grafts on her knees “to give her the best chance” to return to a high level, Stéphanie Nemour said.
While osteochondritis can be common in gymnasts, and even congenital, the severity of Nemour’s condition led the French gymnastics federation to wonder if it had been caused by overtraining, a charge that had arisen before with athletes working with the Chirilcencos.
Cécile Nony, a gymnastics reporter for the French newspaper L’Équipe, said that the couple were known to “push for high difficulty at too young an age.” Chirilcenco disputed the accusation: “We train roughly the same number of hours as other French training centers, and we have no more injuries,” he said.
The two issues — Nemour’s training location and health — soon became conflated. When Nemour got the all-clear from her personal doctors to resume training in March 2022, the federation’s doctor refused to agree.
Chirilcenco soon lost his position as a national coach. The gym was stripped of its status as a state training center — losing funding in the process — and the federation asked the regional authorities to investigate the Chirilcencos and what it charged was their “excessive influence over minor athletes and endangerment of them.” After 47 interviews with gymnasts, parents and staff, the inquiry ultimately cleared the coaches.
The idea of competing for Algeria materialized as a way out of the standoff. Nemour’s father had an Algerian passport because his parents had been born in the country, and Nemour was entitled to one as well. “I wanted a solution, to avoid spending another year without being allowed to compete,” she said.
Algerian gymnastics officials welcomed her. An athlete of Nemour’s caliber had the potential to raise the profile of the sport not just in the country but across Africa, which had never earned a world or Olympic medal in women’s gymnastics.
France didn’t let Nemour go so easily, however. Under international rules, gymnasts must obtain a letter of release from their former federation to compete under a new flag, or face a one-year delay. Only the intervention of the French sports minister last year released her in time to qualify for the 2023 world championships.
There, in October, Nemour won the silver medal on the uneven bars at age 16. She didn’t realize what the result meant for African gymnastics, she said, until she started receiving a deluge of messages and interview requests. “It came as a shock,” she said. “There was so much support from Algeria that I’m really happy to represent the country.”
An Olympic medal would be an ever bigger breakthrough. While the uneven bars offer her most promising chance — she qualified for the apparatus final with the highest score on Sunday — Nemour has also recently emerged as an all-around threat: She is the fourth-ranked gymnast entering the final on Thursday.
For France, which has a respected history in gymnastics but rarely features among medal favorites at the Olympics, the loss of an athlete of her ability is incalculable. “With Kaylia, the French team was at least twice as likely to win a team medal at a home Games, aside from her individual potential,” said Nony, the sports journalist. (In Sunday’s qualification round, France failed to qualify for any women’s final.)
With the ordeal behind her, Nemour said that she felt “no heartache” over competing for another country in Paris.
“The Olympics were a goal I had for myself,” she said. “Whether it’s for France or Algeria, it will still be me, Kaylia, on the floor.”
