Pierre Stéphan, Franco-Haitian gymnast. Photo: Ismaël Cherarak.
Pierre Stéphan, a Franco-Haitian gymnast residing in Antibes in France and licensed at the Vallauris club, becomes the first male representative of Haiti in this discipline at the Olympic Games which will begin in Paris on July 26.
This step is historic in several ways. Pierre Yvenel Augustin Stephan, born in Haiti on February 16, 2000 and arrived in France at the age of three and a half, plays the first internationally renowned Haitian male gymnast. Before him, no athlete had had the opportunity to represent Haiti in this discipline.
For him, this recognition crowns years of effort and determination, marked by periods of injuries which had often kept him out of competitions in France.
“I’m about to compete in the Olympics,” he said. “That’s why I work hard in training to be prepared for any eventuality and not be ridiculed when I participate,” he continued to the NBC newspaper.
Stephan’s Olympic journey represents a new chapter for Haiti in the sporting field, taking place in a context marked by endemic gang violence and political turbulence in Port-au-Prince.
Haiti’s Olympic history is punctuated by rarity, with only two medals to its name: a silver in team shooting in Paris in 1924 and a bronze in the long jump in Amsterdam in 1928.
Stephan thus aspires to breathe new life into the country’s Olympic heritage through his participation in the Paris Olympics next July.
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