As Mark Hanretty has been waxing poetic on Dania Mouaden, Théo Bigot and their coach Barbara Piton, here are some hard facts about them.
Barbara-Piton-the-coach appeared on the international scene around 2013 with a lovely young pre-novice couple,
Lila-Maya Seclet-Monchot /Adrien Masseron. For their age, they were GOOD. She had a lot of ambitions for them, like olympic ambitions with a metal and a year in mind. Then a couple of years later, they disappeared from competition before he was 13. They came back 2 years later, with a different coach, as Piton had them split and wouldn't take them back together. Their results fizzled out, his family didn't have the wealth to support his skating costs without additional fundings. End of the story.
Around 2015, she followed up with
Mathilde Grandin and mini-Gwend... Martin Chardain. Piton, once again, had a lot of ambitions for them, same kind than with Seclet-Monchot/Masseron. She kept them until he was 14-15. Their latest international results were not completly satisfying. They left for Paris and Fabian Bouzat before covid, immediatly split and
lost their mojo.
Around 2017, it was
Enola Perrin and Alexis Calderon (I luurved Alexis). They were winning everything. I thought he was a little short. They disappeared from the radars when he was aroud 13. Actually Enola was Piton's (young) assistant coach for a couple of years.
And around 2018, she had
Théo Bigot in international competition, with Maddie Moreira (they had skated together for at least 3 seasons). She had them split and she paired him in 209-2020 with a girl that was doing figure skating and solo ice dance in Belfort (she had a
lion plushy in her early K&C). That was Dania Mouaden. Piton then said she was aiming at 2024 Jr Worlds for them and 2030 OGs.
She had a few other young dancers but she cut off everyone else around the covid period, only keeping
Louise Cohas-Bogey.
Since then, she has not recruited other boys (just a partner for Louise). But she has been working on girls.
Lison who is 12.
Julia and
Darina who are 11.
Anaé who is 9.
Emma Jade who is 8. That's ridiculously few competitors compared to the other major french training centers. But they all are or soon could be champions of their age category.
What are the special characteristics of Chalons' training center ?
Piton coaches alone, with her brother helping during the week-ends (he's busy at the Interior Ministry during the week). Dad has been the president of the skating club since 1982. Her mum and her brother are part of the board. Other members of the board and volunteers of the club are the parents of her skaters.
The superb (irony) website of the club is testament to the fact that there are no unnecessary spendings. Which is why I've nicknamed her the "Guy Roux of ice dance" (Guy Roux is a legendary french football coach, who built a state-of-the-art youth training center in a small city and launched many french football stars ; he is famously penny-wise and has always promoted a modest way of life ; he's often used as a meme for the zero waste concept).
Piton has choreoed ballet on ice for the last 10 years. Like Arribert (who actually studied choreography at the
Centre Chorégraphique National de Grenoble and knows her stuff), she's sooo using that in ice dance. It took her a few years to move away from "the greatest ice-dance programs of the past". Nowadays, you wouldn't guess.
She works with several external people but especially with the CNAC, the
Centre National des Arts du Cirque, located in Chalons en Champagne. Actually, she recruited Lila-Maya and Martin through the CNAC. Lila-Maya's parents are circus artists/teachers and Martin's parents probably too (they had baby pictures together on their Instagram). And Lila-Maya's sister,
Louana, is
the face of the show Echo, by the Cirque du Soleil.
