Cecile and Laurent Landi helped Simone Biles reach new heights. The Olympics serve as a homecoming

Sport

Cecile and Laurent Landi helped Simone Biles reach new heights. The Olympics serve as a homecoming

2024-07-21 22:51 Last Updated At：23:00

SPRING, Texas (AP) — Cecile Canqueteau-Landi fit “in the box,” as she put it. She was skinny. She was blonde. She was pretty good at gymnastics.

And so at 9 years old, she was whisked away to become part of the French national team program, a path that ultimately led her to the 1996 Olympics.

There was reward in that journey. Yet looking back nearly three decades later, Landi wonders how many promising young athletes had their careers and their lives altered — and not for the better — because they didn’t fit someone's preconceived notion of what a gymnast needed to look like by the time they reached their 10th birthday.

When Landi transitioned into coaching in the early 2000s, she vowed not to make the same mistake.

So maybe it's not a coincidence that when Landi and her husband, Laurent — himself a former French national team member — walk onto the floor at Bercy Arena for women's Olympics qualifying next Sunday, they will do it while leading the oldest U.S. women's gymnastics team — headlined by 27-year-old Simone Biles — the Americans have ever sent to a modern Games.

In another country in another era, maybe Biles becomes something other than an icon.

“An athlete like Simone would never have reached her full potential in France," said Cecile. “Because she would have been put aside because she didn't fit that box."

For the Landis — who began coaching Biles in 2017 — there is no “box.” There can't be.

“It’s not the athlete that needs to adjust to the coaches," Laurent Landi said. "The coaches need to adjust to the athletes and the athlete's abilities.”

Biles was already 20 and the reigning Olympic champion when the Landis agreed to helm the elite program at World Champions Centre, the massive gym run by the Biles family in the Houston suburbs.

They knew Biles fairly well at the time, having already coached gymnasts who competed alongside Biles at several world championships and the 2016 Olympics. During the interview process, all three agreed there was no point — and no fun — in having Biles merely try to hold on to her otherworldly talent. To keep her engaged, they needed to make sure she kept moving forward.

The result has been perhaps the best gymnastics of Biles' remarkable career, a stretch that includes three world all-around titles and another handful of entries in the sport's Code of Points with her name next to them, from the triple-double on floor exercise to the Yurchenko double pike vault that drew a standing ovation at the Olympic trials last month.

Biles views her relationship with the Landis as more of a partnership.

“They’ve been big mentors in like my adulthood (because) they got to see and harness the more mature Simone,” Biles said. “They’ve helped me a lot not just in the gym but out of the gym, too.”

When Biles moved into her first house, Cecile came over and showed her how to operate the dishwasher. When a gymnast who had just gotten their driver's license had a problem with one of her tires, Cecile went to a nearby gas station and gave a tutorial on how to use the air pump.

“If we can help and they want the help, then why not?” she said, with a laugh.

The trick is finding a way to provide that help safely and productively, particularly amid a culture shift in the sport aimed at empowering athletes to take ownership of their gymnastics. It is a delicate needle to thread. What serves as motivation for one athlete could be construed negatively by another.

It's a reality the Landis are well aware of as they try to find the proper balance between being too rigid and too lax. They grew up in a time when the coach/athlete relationship was one-sided. There was no back and forth. There was no discussion. The coach set the standards and expectations. The athlete met them or they didn't last long.

The shift toward a more cooperative approach was overdue, but that doesn't mean it is always easy. Laurent Landi acknowledges he's not the most patient coach, although those around him say he has mellowed a bit over the years. He also understands if he wants to keep doing this for a living, he didn't have much of a choice.

“Yeah, there will be frustration," he said. “But you can always go around some stuff and just take your pride (as a coach) away and make sure that the athletes still get the skill done.”

It's an approach that helped World Champion Centre's elite program send five athletes to the Olympic trials, with Biles and Jordan Chiles making the five-woman U.S. team while Joscelyn Roberson and Tiana Sumanasekera were selected as alternates.

It's the kind of success Roberson envisioned when she moved to the Houston suburbs a few years ago to train under the Landis. She was intimidated at first before realizing her new coaches “have a million different ways to coach one skill," a marked departure from what she was used to.

The goal is to meet the athletes where they are at on a given day, understanding no two gymnasts are the same and what works for one might not necessarily work for another. Perhaps even more importantly, they have learned to evolve as the nature of coaching evolves.

“We’re not always right,” Laurent said. “If you do your own way all the time, you will hurt the majority of the athletes. Maybe one will survive and will be an amazing person, amazing athlete but the (other) 90%, they will be broken. ... We had to adjust to Simone, otherwise we would have broke her."

It's not just Biles' age they had to accommodate, but her schedule. She is no longer a precocious teenager who buries herself in the gym. She's a newlywed whose schedule is packed with everything from corporate commitments to building a house and a family with her husband, Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens.

“When (we) tell him he just hears ‘you’re missing practice’ and kind of freaks out,” Biles said. "Because he sees all the end goals and then he gets the calendar and then he’s like: ’Oh, OK, that’s fine. We’ll do this today, we’ll do that.' So it just takes time for him to process.”

Biles certainly appears well-prepared. She arrives in Paris at the height of her powers more than a decade after ascending to the top of her sport. She'll be accompanied by a pair of coaches who view the trip as more of a business trip than a homecoming.

While the Landis have been approached to take over the women's national team program in France in recent years, returning never made much sense to them even with the women's program is in the midst of a resurgence.

“I think our family will be very proud, probably more than we are," Cecile Landi said. “Because in a weird way, it’s just work for us.”

And perhaps, goodbye, too.

Cecile, long a supporter of NCAA gymnastics, earlier this year agreed to become the co-head coach at the University of Georgia. Laurent will remain at World Champions Centre in the short term until daughter Juliette — who will dive for France during the Games — graduates from high school next spring.

After that, who knows? The young gymnast put in a box has become a coach who no longer puts limitations on anyone, herself maybe most of all.

“I think I've done everything I could do in elite, and beyond what I could ever have imagined as a little French girl in a little town,” Cecile said. “I've coached the greatest of all time. I've coached many kids. I've had many great athletes in NCAA and elite that I feel like I want to try what's next, a new challenge.”

AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

The Latest: White House unveils Trump's 2026 proposed budget

2025-05-03 03:37 Last Updated At：03:40

The White House is unveiling President Donald Trump’s budget, a sweeping framework proposing steep reductions in non-defense domestic spending while increasing expenditures on national security. The budget plan released Friday shows a desire to crack down on diversity programs and initiatives to address climate change.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to strip temporary legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to being deported.

Here's the latest:

The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in President Xi Jinping’s government: Come work with us.

America’s premier spy agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted to YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day.

The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost both the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted U.S. officials with its own espionage operations.

The videos are “aimed at recruiting Chinese officials to steal secrets,” Ratcliffe said in a statement to The Associated Press. He said China “is intent on dominating the world economically, militarily, and technologically.”

In response, the state will drop its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey announced.

The money that was suspended funds a statewide child nutrition program. A federal judge had ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze those funds last month after finding that Maine was likely to succeed in its legal challenge.

“It’s unfortunate that my office had to resort to federal court just to get USDA to comply with the law and its own regulations,” Frey said in a statement.

A letter from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins explained that the decision to suspend funding stemmed from a disagreement between Maine and the federal government over whether the state was complying with Title IX, the law that bans discrimination in education based on sex nationwide. Trump had accused Maine of failing to comply with his executive order barring transgender athletes from sports.

▶ Read more about the settlement between Maine and the Trump administration

The American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union said Friday they will work together to produce peer-reviewed research documents assessing the current and future national impacts of climate change in the U.S.

Earlier this week, Trump’s Republican administration told about 400 scientists working on the National Climate Assessment that they are no longer needed and that the report was being reevaluated.

That report, coming once every four to five years, is required by a 1990 federal law and was due around 2027. Preliminary budget documents show slashing funding or eliminating offices involved in coordinating that report, scientists and activists said.

AGU President Brandon Jones says they are “are filling in a gap in the scientific process.”

▶ Read more on the National Climate Assessment

The strategy is the main blueprint that lays out the department’s priorities as it moves to confront national security threats around the world.

It will be Hegseth’s opportunity to highlight what he wants the U.S. military to focus on for the next several years, and how the department will shift toward Trump’s America First doctrine.

The draft also will have to reflect the impact of Hegseth’s sweeping personnel cuts and decisions to merge a number of military commands.

The order was signed Friday.

The high-stakes meeting comes as Trump continues his trade war and annexation threats.

Carney’s Liberal Party scored a stunning comeback victory in a vote widely seen as a rebuke of Trump, whose trade war and attacks on Canadian sovereignty outraged voters.

“Canadians elected a new government to stand up to President Trump and build a strong economy,” Carney said in his first remarks since since election night.

Carney also said King Charles III will deliver a speech outlining the Canadian government’s priorities on May 27, when Parliament resumes. Charles is the head of state in Canada, which is a member of the British Commonwealth of former colonies.

▶ Read more about Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

Vance says the Trump administration is keeping its promises.

In an opinion piece published by the Washington Post, Vance writes that he and Trump campaigned on reversing what they said are failures by the previous administration and returning to “successful, proven policies” from Trump’s first term.

“And we’re delivering,” Vance says.

He cites the crackdown on illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, “reindustrializing” of the American economy and “rebalancing” relations with trading partners. He doesn’t mention tariffs.

Trump’s tariffs plans have caused worldwide economic uncertainty.

Vance ends by promising that “the best is yet to come.”

Public Broadcasting Service CEO Paula Kerger said the Republican president’s order “threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years.”

“We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans,” Kerger said.

Trump signed the order late Thursday, alleging “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting.

The order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies to “cease Federal funding” for PBS and National Public Radio and further requires that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. The White House, in a social media posting announcing the signing, said the outlets “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”

▶ Read more about Trump’s executive order on PBS and NPR

President Trump’s 2026 budget plan would slash non-defense domestic spending by $163 billion while increasing expenditures on national security, according to statements released by the White House on Friday.

The budget showed a desire to crack down on diversity programs and initiatives to address climate change. But the administration has yet to release detailed tables on what it wants income taxes, tariffs or the budget deficit to be — a sign of the political and financial challenge confronting Trump when he’s promising to cut taxes and repay the federal debt without doing major damage to economic growth.

Budgets do not become law but serve as a touchstone for the upcoming fiscal year debates. Often considered a statement of values, this first budget since Trump’s return to the White House carries the added weight of defining the Republican president’s second-term pursuits, alongside his party in Congress.

▶ Read more about Trump’s budget plan

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier to remain in the Middle East for the second time, a U.S. official says.

Hegseth is keeping it there one more week to maintain two carrier strike groups in the region to battle Yemen-based Houthi rebels, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

In late March, Hegseth also extended the deployment of the Truman and the warships in its group for a month as part of a campaign to increase strikes on the Iran-backed Houthis.

The official said Hegseth signed the latest order Thursday and it’s expected that the Truman will head home to Norfolk, Virginia, after the week is up.

It has been rare in recent years for the U.S. to have two aircraft carriers in the Middle East at the same time.

— Lolita C. Baldor

The Food and Drug Administration is bringing back some of the 100 recently fired staffers who process document requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Staffers across several parts of the agency were notified of the decision Thursday in writing or by phone, according to two agency staffers who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss agency matters. The notifications went out to employees who work in the centers for drugs, tobacco and other product areas. The FDA responds to thousands of FOIA requests each year from lawyers, journalists, companies and physicians.

In recent days, the FDA has missed multiple court-ordered deadlines to hand over documents to parties suing the agency, which can result in hefty fines. The missed deadlines prompted the decision to bring back FOIA staffers.

— Matthew Perrone

Hiring in April was down slightly from a revised 185,000 in March and came in above economists’ expectations for a modest 135,000. The unemployment rate remained at a low 4.2%, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Trump’s aggressive and unpredictable policies – including massive import taxes – have clouded the outlook for the economy and the job market and raised fears that the American economy is headed toward recession.

But Friday’s report showed the job market remains solid.

“The labor market refuses to buckle in the face of trade war uncertainty,’’ said Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at fwdbonds, a financial markets research firm. “Politicians can count their lucky stars that companies are holding on to their workers despite the storm clouds forming that could slow the economy further in the second half of the year.’’

▶ Read more about the U.S. jobs report

Abbe Lowell’s clients have included Hunter Biden, Jared Kushner and Sens. John Edwards and Bob Menendez.

His current clients include New York Attorney General Letitia James. Lowell sent a letter to the Justice Department last week urging it to refuse a Trump administration official’s request to prosecute the Democrat for mortgage fraud, calling it “improper political retribution.”

Lowell is also representing Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration official who was singled out in a presidential memo last month in which Trump called for a Justice Department investigation of his activities, and Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer whose security clearance Trump has moved to revoke.

In a statement announcing the creation of Lowell & Associates, Lowell said he was “excited to once again lead a small yet nimble team ready to represent companies, non-profits and individuals in need of our experience and dedication.”

That’s after China’s Commerce Ministry said Beijing is evaluating overtures from the U.S. regarding Trump’s tariffs.

Futures for the S&P 500 gained 0.3% before the bell and were on track for a ninth straight day of gains. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.4% and Nasdaq futures ticked up 0.2%.

Exxon Mobil’s reported its lowest first-quarter profit in years, stung by weaker crude prices and higher costs. Its shares ticked up less than 1% before markets opened Friday.

Shares in rival Chevron fell more than 2% after it also reported its smallest first quarter profit in years.

▶ Read more about the financial markets

Japan’s massive holdings of U.S. Treasurys can be “a card on the table” in negotiations over tariffs with the Trump administration, Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato said Friday.

“It does exist as a card, but I think whether we choose to use it or not would be a separate decision,” Kato said during a news show on national broadcaster TV Tokyo.

Kato didn’t elaborate and he didn’t say Japan would step up sales of its holdings of U.S. government bonds as part of its talks over Trump’s tariffs on exports from Japan.

Earlier, Japanese officials including Kato had ruled out such an option.

Japan is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, at $1.13 trillion as of late February. China, also at odds with the Trump administration over trade and tariffs, is the second largest foreign investor in Treasurys.

▶ Read more about Japan’s talks with the U.S. over tariffs

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” he wrote on his social media site Friday morning. “It’s what they deserve!”

Trump and his White House have repeatedly gone after Harvard. In addition to threatening its tax-exempt status, the administration has halted more than $2 billion in grants to Harvard and wants to block the school from being able to enroll international students.

The detailed Army plans for a potential military parade on Trump’s birthday in June call for more than 6,600 soldiers, at least 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven bands and possibly a couple thousand civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

The planning documents, obtained by the AP, are dated April 29 and 30 and have not been publicly released. They represent the Army’s most recent blueprint for its long-planned 250th anniversary festival on the National Mall and the newly added element — a large military parade that Trump has long wanted but is still being discussed.

The Army anniversary just happens to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday on June 14.

While the slides do not include any price estimates, it would likely cost tens of millions of dollars to put on a parade of that size.

▶ Read more about the Army’s military parade plans

As Trump faces significant pushback from federal judges, a new poll shows U.S. adults are more likely to believe the president is the one overstepping his power rather than the courts -- although Republicans largely think the opposite.

According to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, about half of Americans say the president has “too much” power in the way government operates these days. On the other hand, Americans are more likely to believe the federal courts have an appropriate amount of authority. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults say that federal judges have “too much” power.

Republicans see it the other way: Roughly half say the federal judiciary has too much power, and only about 2 in 10 say the president does.

▶ Read more about the latest AP-NORC poll

When the Justice Department lifted a school desegregation order in Louisiana this week, officials called its continued existence a “historical wrong” and suggested that others dating to the Civil Rights Movement should be reconsidered.

The end of the 1966 legal agreement with Plaquemines Parish schools announced Tuesday shows the Trump administration is “getting America refocused on our bright future,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said.

Inside the Justice Department, officials appointed by Trump have expressed a desire to withdraw from other desegregation orders they see as an unnecessary burden on schools, according to a person familiar with the issue who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Dozens of school districts across the South remain under court-enforced agreements dictating steps to work toward integration, decades after the Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in education. Some see the court orders’ endurance as a sign the government never eradicated segregation, while officials in Louisiana and at some schools see the orders as bygone relics that should be wiped away.

▶ Read more about the end to the desegregation order

— Collin Binkley

Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aiming to slash public subsidies to PBS and NPR as he alleged “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting.

The order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and further requires that that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. The White House, in a social media posting announcing the signing, said the outlets “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”

It’s the latest move by Trump and his administration to utilize federal powers to control or hamstring institutions whose actions or viewpoints he disagrees with. Since taking office, Trump has ousted leaders, placed staff on administrative leave and cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to artists, libraries, museums, theaters and others, through takeovers of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

▶ Read more about the executive order

Rubio has been thrown into two top national security jobs at once as Trump presses forward with his top-to-bottom revamp of U.S. foreign policy, upending not only longstanding policies that the former Florida senator once supported but also the configuration of the executive branch.

Trump’s appointment of Rubio to temporarily replace Mike Waltz as national security adviser is the first major leadership shake-up of the nascent administration, but Waltz’s removal had been rumored for weeks — ever since he created a Signal group chat and accidentally added a journalist to the conversation where top national security officials shared sensitive military plans.

So, just over 100 days into his tenure as America’s top diplomat, Rubio now becomes just the second person to hold both positions. He follows only the late Henry Kissinger, who served as both secretary of state and national security adviser for two years under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the 1970s.

▶ Read more about Rubio’s new role

The Justice Department asked the high court to put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelans that would have otherwise expired last month.

The status allows people already in the United States to live and work legally because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.

A federal appeals court had earlier rejected the administration’s request.

Trump’s administration has moved aggressively to withdraw various protections that have allowed immigrants to remain in the country, including ending TPS for a total of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians. TPS is granted in 18-month increments.

The emergency appeal to the high court came the same day a federal judge in Texas ruled illegal the administration’s efforts to deport Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law. The cases are not related.

▶ Read more about the Trump administration’s request