Kevin Aymoz: “I hit rock bottom”

Kevin Aymoz ended his season in January 2024 after a meltdown at the European Championships. The charismatic Frenchman celebrated a successful comeback by taking silver at Skate America, his first ISU Grand Prix of the season. He continued his success at the ISU Grand Prix Finlandia Trophy in November and qualified for the ISU Grand Prix Final in his hometown of Grenoble. We met Kevin at Skate America for this interview.

Congratulations to your spectacular comeback at Skate America. You said you wanted to come here and do well but you didn’t expect this kind of success.

Kevin: I didn’t think that I would be able to compete for a medal in my comeback competition at the world stage. For me, it was just a comeback, the medal was not my goal. I just wanted to skate. The goal was really not to give up in the middle of the program. In the four past years, I’ve moved up continuously, until my fourth place at the World Championships (2023), breaking 100 points at World Team Trophy in the Short Program. Then I came to Skate America (2023) and got the silver medal. After that I went to (the Grand Prix in) Finland. That was a bit harder but I got the bronze medal. I qualified again for the Grand Prix Final and I felt I was going up and I felt good.

However, I felt a lot of pressure, coming from myself and also from the outside. I felt a bit the pressure from the audience and I told myself, I cannot disappoint the audience, you have to do everything. There was also the media. Certain French media really were on my back and compared me a lot to other athletes. This was very hard for me. Suddenly, I felt that I was compared to others and I had to try and prove that I was the best.