French Olympian Suffers Cruciate Ligament Tear During Training Jump
Emma Chervet, a 22-year-old French ski jumper from Chamonix who competed at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, has torn the cruciate ligaments in her knee and will miss the entire 2026/27 competitive season. The injury occurred during a training session at the Olympic ski jump at Le Praz in Courchevel. Étienne Gouy, director of the French ski jumping teams, confirmed the extent of the damage after Chervet fell while landing a jump at the Savoie facility.
The injury is a severe blow to a jumper who had been steadily establishing herself at the international level. Chervet's selection for the 2026 Winter Olympics alongside compatriot Joséphine Pagnier marked a milestone for French women's ski jumping, and the trajectory of her development suggested she was closing the gap on the world's top women's jumpers. The accident at Praz eliminates any chance of her building on that Olympic experience during the coming winter.
An Ill-Timed Venue
The irony of the injury is its location. Courchevel's Le Praz hill is scheduled to host the second stop of the 2026 FIS Ski Jumping Summer Grand Prix on August 8 and 9, just days after Chervet's fall. France has selected nine athletes for the event, with her brother Jules Chervet named in the men's squad. Emma will now watch from the sidelines as the Grand Prix rounds off a week that has turned sharply painful for the French team.
The Praz jump carries additional significance this summer: it will be the final competition held at Courchevel before extensive modernisation work begins on the facility ahead of the 2030 Winter Olympics. The venue's transformation means Chervet will almost certainly return to a substantially different hill when she is eventually fit to compete there again.
Grand Prix Standings and What Chervet Loses
With two of the seven Summer Grand Prix rounds complete after the Wisła stop at the start of August, France's hopes in the women's overall standings now rest entirely on Pagnier. She sits fourth with 110 points, behind Slovenian leader Nika Vodan (150 points), her compatriot Ema Klinec (145 points), and Norway's Silje Opseth (140 points). Chervet had not accumulated Grand Prix points at Wisła, but a healthy campaign through the seven-stop summer tour might have yielded her first significant results on the circuit.
Norway's Courchevel squad includes Anna Odine Ström, Johann André Forfang, and Marius Lindvik. The full women's field will be announced by the Norwegian federation ahead of the August 8 competition.
Outlook and Recovery Timeline
Cruciate ligament reconstruction typically requires nine to twelve months of rehabilitation before an athlete can return to competition. That timeline puts Chervet's earliest realistic return in the second half of the 2026/27 season at best — more likely the 2027/28 campaign. The French ski jumping federation had not announced a surgical plan or detailed recovery schedule at the time of publication, but Gouy's confirmation of a torn cruciate left no ambiguity about the severity of the setback. Pagnier, meanwhile, heads to Courchevel on Saturday as the sole French women's medal contender in what is effectively a home event on the road to the 2030 Games.