Young gymnast puts a spin on the average teenager’s routine
By Rachel Moore
Martin Monderie cleans the dusty white chalk off his hands, studies his hairdo, and walks out of the gym after practice with his school bag slung over his shoulder.
When you ask the 17-year-old if he considers himself a normal teenager, he’ll ponder a moment and say “no.”
Most kids Monderie’s age are looking ahead to university or college. But he thinks only of a career in gymnastics.
On his 17th birthday last month, Monderie became the first Canadian male gymnast ever to perform a full twisting double layout backwards, a world-class move that involves two straight body back flips and a twist.
There are only about 10 men in the world who can do the move in their floor routines, most of them from Russia. But Monderie makes it look easy.
At first glance, Monderie looks just like any of the young gymnasts around him; bare foot, clad in a simple white T-shirt and black shorts, with the same intense look of concentration. But a closer look reveals a muscular frame, which makes him look much older than his 17 years. He eyes the long blue felt runway before him and tunes out what surrounds him, kids tumbling and swinging, chalking up and taking off, running the same felt runways alongside him.
He takes off into a sprint, and as he nears the end of his runway, he leaps forward, and his strong hands meet the ground, sending his body up high into a neat, tight series of quick flips.
“Did you get that?” he asks the photographer who stands ready with her camera beside the red mat.
“Um, it was a lot faster than I thought, could you try it again?” she asks, her awe written all over her face.
He walks calmly back to the end of the line of kids using the runway and waits patiently. He seems unaware that when he takes off, it’s as if someone just turned up the speed dial in his little corner of the gym.
“It’s so amazing. We’ve never seen anyone in Canada do anything like it,” said 14-year-old Jonah Swartz, a gymnast who trains at the Ottawa Gymnastics Club with Monderie. “I think ‘well, if he can do it, and I’m training with him, maybe I can do it.’”
The move was part of a performance that earned Monderie a second place finish at the Elite Canada men’s artistic gymnastics meet in Montreal in October. It also drew an invitation to the national junior team, which will compete in the 1998 Pan-Am junior meet in Texas.
When you ask the Gatineau gymnast how it feels to be part of Team Canada, he won’t give you the stereotypical, ‘I’m just proud to represent my country’ speech in the famous meet-the-press manner some athletes will deliver.
“I feel like a big guy now,” he says instead. “And it means I’ll get a jacket, a Canada jacket.”
Monderie doesn’t dodge questions or rhyme off quick anecdotal phrases that will sound pretty in the paper. Born and raised a francophone, he admits first off that he isn’t very comfortable with his English, and struggles a little to articulate what it feels like to be a teenager with a pretty big job.
“I always like to think it takes a lot of courage to train every day like this,” he says. “I feel good knowing that this isn’t something a lot of people could stick with, but I’m doing it.”
Monderie trains at the Ottawa club 20 hours a week. He says the policy around the gym is “school before gym” and the gymnasts help each other with homework before they take to the mats.
He works his routines over and over again, despite sore ankles or wrists, or a twisted disc in his back. He admits it’s often frustrating and tiresome, especially when his friends are out having fun without him.
“Sometimes I just want to go out with my friends, but I’ve got to work out,” he says. “But I just keep telling myself it’s going to pay off someday. The 2000 Olympics are only two years away.”
Under his coach Matthew Sparks, Monderie maintains a steady routine of weight training and conditioning on top of the constant fine tuning of his routines on the vault, pommel horse, parallel bars, high bar, rings and the floor.
“He’s a young man, and he’s training 20 hours a week when he could be hanging out with his friends,” says Sparks. “It takes a lot for a kid to say, ‘no guys, I’ve got to go sweat in the gym for four hours.’ But he does it.”
Sparks says Monderie is “absolutely through the roof” on the floor and the vault (the events he loves), but loathes conditioning and tedious work on the events he doesn’t enjoy. He notes that Monderie is going in the same direction as many young male gymnasts these days, towards the more daring, dazzling, awe-aspiring moves.
“No one ever did stuff like that 10 years ago, but there’s this new generation of gymnasts that just love pure tricks,” he says, calling Monderie. “His floor and vault routines get huge points for difficulty, because he loves that kind of thing.”
Sparks says Monderie is a gymnast the Olympic team would love, but Canada’s national team may not be at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. In the last world championships Canada placed 15th out of 17 teams. If they want to qualify for the 2000 Games, they’ll have to be in the top 12.
“Our team played it too safe at the last worlds, doing routines that were near perfect but with really low difficulty levels,” says Sparks. “But we’ve got to do the more challenging routines, and Martin is amazing at that type of thing.”
But Monderie isn’t simply limiting himself to the Olympics. He says that young gymnasts have another great avenue to pursue: Cirque de Soleil, a travelling circus with acrobats.
“I have a bunch of friends in Cirque, and it’s awesome,” he says. “They have so much fun, they travel all over the place, and it’s way more stunts, and acrobatics and dance. It’s definitely something I would love to do.”
Monderie visited Cirque de Soleil’s practice facility in Montreal with Sparks, and the coach admits he saw Monderie’s eyes light up.
“I suspect he might be one of the ones we lose,” says Sparks. “I mean, he could make $50,000 a year U.S and travel the world. But I hope he sticks around the national team for a few years first.”
Monderie admits much of what he loves about gymnastics is being with the other gymnasts his age, travelling, and hearing all the applause.
“I just love gym,” he says. “Whether I end up at the Olympics, or with Cirque or as a coach, I’ll just keep working at it.”