On July 18, 1992, Sylvie Fréchette arrived home in Montreal to find her fiancé, Sylvain Lake, dead.. All the windows were down and all the doors were closed except one: the one that connected the living room with the garage, where the couple's car had been running for hours.. It stank of smoke. Lake had committed suicide.
On August 6, 1992, Sylvie Fréchette won gold in the synchronized swimming solo at the Barcelona Olympics after a revolutionary exercise and became a star in Canada. Immediately, the National Bank made her the star of its advertisements and public television gave her a talk show called 'Simplement Sylvie'.
Between both days, less than three weeks and a succession of events that Fréchette does not remember today. The massive press conference he offered at the Montreal airport before flying to Barcelona, the previous days in the Olympic Village, the opening ceremony, his controversial victory at the Picornell pools, the celebration that did not exist, the massive reception of return home or the thousands of letters of admiration that Canadian fans sent him in the following days. Anything. For decades, his memory has avoided the saddest and, at the same time, the happiest moments of his life.. At 56 years old, she does not regret any brain disease, she is healthy, but she still suffers from the effects of severe post-traumatic stress disorder.
Do you even remember any moment or any specific detail from those Games? Nothing. It's very difficult to understand, I know. And for me it's also very confusing because I don't know what's real and what's not.. For example, I remember my return to Canada, the thousands of people waiting for me at the airport, but in my mind I appear in the third person. I guess what I remember is seeing the images of my arrival on television. It's amazing what the mind did to protect me. After the suicide of my boyfriend, my fiancé, and just before the Olympic Games, the blockade was the only way to move forward. At what moment does that void in your memory begin and at what moment does it end? From that tragic day , when I arrived at what was my house, I don't remember anything else until November. From August, September and October I keep nothing. In November I started touring Canada as part of the National Bank promotion and I do remember that: the cities I visited, the people I met.. I also remember the first Christmas in my new house, because I sold the previous one, of course.. To avoid being alone on those special days I began to invite people, many people, even strangers. Return to Barcelona
Fréchette now wants to know. He wants to know what is happening to him, so he has consulted experts, who have told him about his mental disorder, its origin, its effects, how it is similar to what many war veterans suffer.. And he wants to know what he really experienced in Barcelona 1992. For this reason, last October he traveled to the city for the first time since the Games, visited the Picornell swimming pools, the Olympic Museum or the Sant Cugat High Performance Center and, among other things, he met a teenager who in that Olympic final was volunteer, helped the judges: Gemma Mengual.
The Canadian public television that organized her trip and made a documentary about it, 'Sylvie Fréchette. Retour à Barcelone', asked Mengual to act as host and the Spanish woman accepted, excited because Fréchette was her childhood idol.. Before she won the 1992 Games, I had seen her become world champion in Madrid 1985 and Perth 1991 and would still see her be Olympic team runner-up at the Atlanta 1996 Games.. «I had been thinking for a while about whether or not to return to Barcelona and I always postponed it. I found excuses under the stones. To tell you the truth, I was terrified.. I was worried about what he would remember and how he would feel about it.. But when I arrived on the first day at the Olympic Museum and met Gemma, ugh! In his eyes I saw how happy he was to help me and his hug was so intense that I thought: 'Nothing can go wrong here,'” explains Fréchette, in a telephone conversation with EL MUNDO from his home in Canada.
Were you able to remember anything from the 1992 Games during your visit? Earlier this year I was interviewed here in Canada, they asked me if I remembered the opening ceremony and I said no because I wasn't really there.. One of my coaches called me and said: Sylvie, of course you went to the ceremony! In the days that followed, I tried to remember and remember and remember and nothing. But you know what? In the Museum there is a room where they broadcast the entire ceremony, I was watching it and I found it! There he was, walking through the stadium with the rest of the Canadian delegation. I started to cry. In fact, I cried a lot during my days in Barcelona, but they were beautiful. Now I finally have memories of Barcelona. I returned to the Picornell pools, the Olympic venue for synchronized swimming. Many things struck me about my return to Picornell. First, the front door. It's very small! I didn't remember her at all. Nor the pool, nothing. But he did remember how to access the water or how to get to the locker rooms. Doesn't that seem crazy to you? And when I dove into the water… it was incredible, really incredible. I felt at home, I felt relieved and you know what? I swam alone! Whole! I am an older person, I don't do much sport, I like good food and I like wine and I was able to complete my solo from the 1992 Barcelona Games. My body did remember.
During his visit to the Olympic Museum, Fréchette also climbed to the top of the Games podium and received his gold in Barcelona, something he could not do in 1992 due to a technical error.. One of the judges, the Brazilian Ana Maria da Silveira Lobo, wrote 8.7 when she really wanted to give it a 9.7 and, although she wanted to rectify it, she did not understand the person responsible, a Japanese judge, because of both of their bad English.. Canada had to protest to the International Swimming Federation and months later Fréchette was proclaimed Olympic champion.
Today, retired after several years working in Las Vegas with Cirque du Soleil, she offers talks on mental health and continues to learn about her mental block.. «Do you know when I decided to look back? When my daughters grew up and people started talking to them about my career, about what I won, about the Barcelona Games. They asked me and I didn't know what to answer.. I began to think that I could not escape the legacy I left them. Now we are together in this, in recovering my past,” concludes Fréchette.