There was a festive atmosphere Tuesday morning at Maisonneuve Park in Montreal. After two years of virtual events, the FitSpirit program has finally held its annual event in person.
For their first big meeting since 2019, the women were invited to a 5 or 10 kilometer race, without a stopwatch or classification. For the simple pleasure of moving. They can also walk from one kiosk to another to hold petanque balls, discs or balloons.
The program’s sponsors, professional dancer Kim Gingras and freestyle skier Justine Dufour-Lapointe, warmed up the crowd on stage to start the day. They have messages for young people.
For me, it’s to continue to be curious and find the physical activity that makes you happy, explains the artist who dramatically danced with Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé on tour. Sometimes our passion is not to run or play badminton. I tried karate, gymnastics, and then I came across someone dancing. My crush. It’s nice to search until we see what makes us happy.
The FitSpirit program, I’ve pretty much done in my whole life, says Justine Dufour-Lapointe. Throughout my career, I have had my sisters by my side and they have been the source of motivation during the most difficult times. Some mornings, when I’m not tempted, they are my godmothers.
For me, FitSpirit is a movement to make women comfortable, added the youngest of the Dufour-Lapointe siblings. He has no opponent, it’s for the pleasure of moving so that one day, probably, it becomes a healthy lifestyle. Together, it is motivating.
Claudine Labelle is the president and founder of the FitSpirit program, which she created 15 years ago. This year, he was able to implement his idea in 230 high schools in Quebec, a record.
Throughout the year, girls are encouraged to move, together.
We are 70 schools away from half of the secondary schools in Quebec and we don’t want to stop there, he explains. In a perfect world, all schools would participate in FitSpirit. Now proof that it works.
Claudine Labelle founded this program in 2007 to fill the gap in participation in physical activities that exists between girls and boys in adolescence. If the number of registered schools increases, the number of participants, on the other hand, decreases during the pandemic.
In 2018, the Montreal stage attracted 4,000 participants, double this year.
We’ve seen a number of girls stop physical activity, it’s hard for us to see it, but this year, to get them back face-to-face, to have experiences like this now, it’s really important , both for their mental health and our physical health. We have 6000 subscribers to FitSpirit and we continue to make it move.
The girls here today are our resilient and it’s not easy to keep them. Now, having face-to-face access to them helps us a lot. When they were more isolated, many girls faced mental health issues, affecting motivation. When we are with our peers, it gives us more motivation to want to move.
Justine Dufour-Lapointe, godmother in her third year, stressed the need for a program like FitSpirit for teenage girls.
Girls have slightly harder or different stakes than boys, explains the Sochi Games champion. During adolescence, we are probably more concerned with our body and sometimes it slows down our physical momentum. Here, we remove barriers and we are really just there to move between girls, without judgment, without competition.
The Montreal stop is the first in a series of six events.
The tour will stop at Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Rimouski, Sainte-Gertrude-de-Manneville on Abitibi, then Port-Cartier on the North Shore.
Dufour-Lapointe has not yet returned to the world
Justine Dufour-Lapointe smiles at the FitSpirit celebration. Sunglasses on his face, looks relaxed, the acrobatic skier seems rested.
The last few months, and even the last years, have been tough in body and soul. While the tears that fell on his cheeks after his fall in the final of the moguls event at the Beijing Games are gone, the memories are not all gone.
It seems like yesterday in my mind and I still feel in the process of returning to Quebec, explains Justine Dufour-Lapointe, 20th official in Beijing. The Games and preparations are very intense and the tension is still slowly easing to this day. I was still in the process and I let myself go. We will meet in the coming months.
So far, he has not seriously continued training.
He never gets tired of skiing with moguls, especially not at -35 degrees like at the previous Olympic Games.
Despite open questions from Radio-Canada Sports, he remained vague about the rest of his career.
The gold medalist in Sochi and silver medalist in Pyeongchang have not set foot on the international podium since February 2020.
I continued to practice here and there because it was important to do it and it was hard to resist it, but I was pretty Status quo now, he says. We watch the summer pass and after that, serious training will take place in the coming months.
At the age of 28, he is still trying to learn from his false adventure in Chinese.
After a short stay in Quebec in February and a final World Cup in France, Justine Dufour-Lapointe took a very good ski vacation, away from the bumps, with her sister Chloé.
He was better, better, even if everything wasn’t perfect yet.
I’m okay, but some days are harder than others, the skier said. I think it’s just normal and that’s the experience that these Games will have given me. Learn to grow from there, learn to live with those emotions and find a way to do good and be a winner.
On Tuesday, his way of doing good was obvious, appreciated and successful.
She shared her joie de vivre and her passion with 2,000 teenage girls.
Source: Radio-Canada
