Kaylia Nemour: Algerian gymnast ready for Paris 2024 after rollercoaster start to career

The French-born teenager talks to The National about switching allegiances, racing to qualify for the Olympics, and having a skill named after her

Kaylia Nemour with her uneven bars silver medal at the 2023 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships. Getty

You don’t need to be a gymnastics expert to realise that Kaylia Nemour’s uneven bars routine is extraordinary.

The 16-year-old French-born Algerian effortlessly transitions from bar to bar, pulling off one inconceivable move after the other, twisting, turning and soaring into the air, making it look all too easy before she sticks the landing.

A true natural on the apparatus, Nemour’s routine drew gasps from the assembled audience at Antwerp’s Sportpaleis as she clinched a silver medal in uneven bars at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, becoming the first African gymnast in history to compete in a World Championship final and secure a medal.

Nemour also reached the final in the individual all-around competition, placing eighth with a total score of 53.966, just 4.433 shy of Simone Biles’ gold medal-winning tally.

She walked away from Antwerp with a ticket to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where she will be a serious contender for at least one podium spot.

“The championship was an incredible experience in terms of the time spent there and the experience I got from being around the biggest gymnasts in the world,” Nemour told The National in an interview translated from French. “I am super proud to have won this medal for Algeria and for Africa.”

Less than six months ago, Nemour wasn’t certain she would be able to even make it to the World Championships, let alone the Olympics.

For two-and-a-half years, she faced one obstacle after another that prevented her from competing. First came Covid, which shut down gyms and cancelled competitions worldwide. Then knee surgery to treat osteochondritis, a condition related to issues with growth plates.

After a six-month rehabilitation period, Nemour was cleared by her surgeon and was deemed fit to compete. But the doctor from the French Gymnastics Federation refused to give her the go-ahead.

There had been a standoff between the federation and the club where Nemour trained, Avoine Beaumont. The federation insisted that all promising young gymnasts should leave their gyms and relocate to Paris to train under their guidance. But Nemour, who was 14 at the time, refused.

Nemour, who was born in France to an Algerian father and a French mother, opted to switch nationalities and represent Algeria, but that required a one-year holding period before she could adopt a new flag. The only way around it would be if the French national team accepted to release her early, which they weren’t willing to do.

During that whole debacle, Nemour was patiently waiting, training every day at Avoine Beaumont, under the guidance of her coaches Marc and Gina Chirilcenco, and developing one of the most difficult uneven bars routine in the history of the sport.

Nemour was barred from competing internationally until the holding period ended in July 2023, but she was running out of time; she needed to appear at the African Championships in Pretoria in May to qualify for the Worlds in October, which in turn would serve as a qualification event for the Olympics. Her chances of making it to Paris 2024 without those prior events would otherwise become very slim.

Nemour’s predicament drew support from the public, and there was an online petition urging the French federation to release her to Algeria in time for the African Championship.

But it was a television programme that detailed other abuses experienced by six French gymnasts that eventually came to the rescue and forced the Minister for Sport and the Olympic and Paralympic Games of France, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, to look into the matter. Soon enough, Nemour was released by the French federation.

“In May this year, when she finally was allowed to compete it was like a real liberation, it was really important for her and she was so happy to compete,” her coach Marc Chirilcenco told The National.

“It was so close, I think we took off to Pretoria just two or three days after we learned she was allowed to compete. It was so quick, she didn’t have enough time to think about or to stress about the competition. We jumped onto the plane and jumped into the field of play, it was so quick and she did well.”

Nemour did more than well. Making her senior debut at an international competition, and after two-and-a-half years of mostly just training in the gym or rehabbing, Nemour stunned the gymnastics community with her uneven bars routine, which had a difficulty score of 6.9, the highest in the world.

On her way to clinching the gold medal in the all-around competition to become African champion for the first time, Nemour debuted a skill that was added to the women’s artistic gymnastics Code of Points in her name.

The eponymous skill, ‘The Nemour’, is commonly known as an ‘inbar nabieva’, which is a variation of the notoriously difficult ‘nabieva’.

“Really it’s incredible to have a move named after me because I know that it will stay forever, after all, for the rest of time, in the history of gymnastics. It’s a point of pride. It’s unbelievable,” Nemour said.

“I never thought about it, but the fact that I invented a skill in my name, at 16, is something crazy.”

The long wait to finally showcase to the world her prodigious abilities was understandably difficult, given Nemour kept on training with no specific target in sight. Switching flags was not as tough though.

“The French federation blocked me for a year from competitions so that’s why I am playing for Algeria. The Algerian federation really welcomed me with open arms ... and I’m very happy to represent Algeria,” said Nemour, who can now fully focus on her next big goal: the Olympics in Paris.

“If I continue with this momentum, I really think I have a chance to get an Olympic medal, which would be the result of a lot of years of work. It would be just magical.”

Since her breakout moment in Pretoria, Nemour crept up on everyone’s radar as a tremendous threat on bars, with videos of her routine going viral. But what took people by surprise at the World Championships in Antwerp was her competitiveness in the individual all-around event.

“The element of surprise will be maybe smaller at the Paris Olympics, but I still think she can make a good surprise,” said Chirilcenco.

“It’s not very far [until] the Olympics, so we have to stay focused. We don’t have too many times to go right and left and prepare new routines.

“We have a small place to change small things, it’s not possible to change a lot of things. And we have to make good preparations. Maybe she’s going to take part in different World Cups to stay at a high level of concentration and physicality. We have a big job ahead of us in the next few months.”