BREAKING: Simone Biles Coach Cecile Landi is TOTALLY Done With Her

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In a surprising turn of events, Simone Biles’ longtime coach, Cecile Landi, is leaving Team USA to join the University of Georgia as co-head coach. This video delves into the details of Landi’s departure, including how Biles was the first to encourage her to take the new opportunity. Discover how Landi’s influence has shaped Biles’ career and how she has supported her athletes through challenging times, including her unwavering dedication to their mental health. Join us as we explore the bond between Biles and Landi and what this change means for the future of UGA Gymnastics.

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.

Cecille Landi coached Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles to team gold in Paris. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

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.

Landi’s closing act in this chapter was a memorable Olympics in her home country. Landi was the coach of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, and two of the athletes she and her husband coach year-round in the Houston suburbs — Biles and Jordan Chiles — helped the Americans win gold. Landi’s daughter, Juliette, also competed here in diving for France, turning the Olympics into a family trip to Paris.

“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.

“I think I’ve done everything I could do in elite and beyond what I could have ever imagined as a little French girl in a little town,” Landi said.

Two decades ago, Cecile and Laurent, a former French national team member, moved to pursue a coaching career in the United States. Without knowing English, they landed in Norman, Okla., and eventually headed to the Dallas area to work at WOGA, a prominent club. There, the Landis coached 2016 Olympian Madison Kocian and world championships team member Alyssa Baumann. They had planned to open their own gym when, in 2017, Biles decided to return to training and needed new coaches. Seven years and two Olympics later, Landi is set to take on a different type of challenge at Georgia.

“She’s got that dreamer’s mentality where she always wants to push herself to learn and grow,” said Janelle McDonald, the gymnastics coach at UCLA and a close friend.

Cecile Landi is known as a coach who fights for her gymnasts. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Landi had known for a while that she wanted to try coaching at the college level, which features slightly easier routines but a much different team-oriented competition format. She just didn’t know when and where.

In April, Georgia fired its coach, 2004 Olympian Courtney Kupets Carter. Then-assistant Ryan Roberts applied for the top job. He had worked at WOGA — albeit at the club’s other location — when Landi coached there, and in his interview, unbeknownst to Landi, he said he wanted Landi to join him in Athens. The athletic director then pitched the idea of Landi and Roberts sharing the role as co-head coaches.

Georgia was once the standard-bearer in college gymnastics, winning five straight national championships from 2005 to 2009. The team’s next two coaches, neither lasting more than five years, mustered some top-10 finishes but nothing close to the previous heights. The school then brought in Kupets Carter, the star gymnast from that dominant era, but the program fell further, ending the season ranked 18th or lower the past four years.

Now Landi and Roberts will try to revive a dormant dynasty.

“I want to win championships,” Roberts said. “I want to win conference, and I want to win nationals. Who better to do it than somebody who’s done it on the biggest stage in the world?”

For Landi, it all happened fast. When Georgia fired Kupets Carter, Landi was in Italy, coaching two of her gymnasts at an international competition. Landi initially talked with Roberts as a concerned club coach: A gymnast from World Champions Centre who graduates next year is committed to Georgia. And as Roberts pursued the head coaching job, Landi said she could be a reference for him.

Soon after, Roberts called Landi with his plan: He wanted to work together. Roberts respected Landi’s technical acumen and her athlete-centric approach. Roberts, previously an assistant at Alabama, had reached out to Landi several years ago when the Crimson Tide needed a coach — “She was my first in mind at that point, too,” Roberts said — but the timing wasn’t right.

Even when Roberts called about the Georgia job, Landi said her first reaction was: “Ha, good one. You know I can’t go now.”

Landi initially believed next year would make sense for a potential career move because her daughter has one more year of high school.

But when Landi talked with Georgia officials as the Olympic season was just about to ramp up, her husband listened and said: “Just accept. Why would you say no?” As a family, the Landis agreed to go for it.

“I don’t think I’ll get that good of an opportunity anytime soon,” Landi said. “Simone was the first one to tell me: ‘I’m so happy for you. You need to go.’”

Laurent will stay in the Houston area with Juliette and remain at World Champions Centre a bit longer as his wife begins the new role. Then he will move to Athens, with his next job uncertain.

Cecile Landi and eventually her husband, Laurent, will head to Athens, Ga., after years of running a gym owned by Simone Biles’s parents in suburban Houston. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Just after Landi told her gymnasts in an emotional meeting, Georgia announced the bold, attention-grabbing hire. At the time, Landi had another four months before her NCAA role began, but now she will begin preparing for the college season, which starts in January.

Roberts admitted the co-head coach setup is a bit “unorthodox,” though he believes “this is going to be a better model than what maybe either of us could do alone.”

Landi reportedly will make $340,000 per year, and Roberts will earn $265,000 — both higher than Kupets Carter’s salary and an indication of Georgia’s ambition to resurrect its program.

“What they need right now is a strong leader that will bring everybody together, understanding the goal, understanding the purpose and the reason,” said Ashlyn Broussard, a gymnast who competed at Georgia from 2014 to 2017 after training with the Landis at the club level. “I really think Cecile’s going to be able to do that.”

Most NCAA head coaches rise from the assistant ranks, and many were college gymnasts themselves. Recruiting will be a new challenge for Landi, and in college, she will take on more administrative work. There’s strategy when assembling lineups on each apparatus, plus the need to keep the noncompeting gymnasts happy and invested in their roles. Gymnastics-wise, the NCAA version of the sport is similar to level 10, the top tier in the development program — and Landi has coached many of those athletes — only with some nuance in developing routines that lend themselves to perfect execution, which is a much bigger focus in college than in elite.