Groupe Adéquat, actor of the Tony Parker Adéquat Academy, will accompany the academics until they obtain their first job. Also, with this new “Sporting Word” section, you will find every month an interview with a top-level athlete who tells us about his journey, sometimes steep, to move from sport to the world of business.
After 12 years on the WTA circuit, including 6 years in the top 100 (best ranking: 61st), Camille Pin ranked his racquet in 2010. Even if she hasn’t been on the courts since, Camille Pin hasn’t stayed away: consultant for Canal+ and now Eurosport, she also works in the organization of several tennis Open all over France.
Meeting this dynamic young woman, who has more than one string on her racket !
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Camille, you moved from the sports world to the professional world a short while ago, how was the transition?
“I stopped playing tennis in 2010, I was immediately in the media, at Canal+ and now at Eurosport, with TV set and match comments. I also immediately followed up with an international sports marketing master’s degree at ESSEC to work in sports organization and management. I also passed my coaching diploma, just in case. And I started training at INSEP and with the Tennis Federation.”
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When you became a professional player, you only had a high school diploma. It was a choice to focus on a sporting career ?
“I graduated high school when I was 16 and a half, I was a year early. I thought, I’m going to do two years of tennis and at worst I’ll go back to school. I wasn’t a hothead, I wouldn’t have stayed five years without anything. If it hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t have stayed in between, without really having a career or an education.”
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How did you feel about returning to school 12 years later ?
“I liked to take on an academic side, I liked studying. I didn’t have any difficulty in redoing my studies to get a diploma. What was complex was finding something I was good at. I had to take on a lot of assignments to find out what I really liked and what I was going to perform in. ”
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And today, did you find what you like ?
“After 6-7 years, I know that I like the organizational and event part. The master’s degree I did allowed me to target my skills and those I don’t have, to be good at what I was going to do. That was the most difficult part of my choices. But it is also the sum of experiences that has brought me to this point. ”
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In a word, a quality to find a job for a former sportsman?
“Flexibility. Each athlete is used to focusing on his or her personal skills, and can identify in which sector he or she is good at preparing for a successful transition and adapting to the environment that best suits him or her ”
If you had to combine sport and work :
- The common point: “pleasure! To be strong in your sport, you have to have some fun. And it’s the same at work! To be competent, you have to love what you do.”
- An obstacle: “In a sport, you are often compartmentalized, it can be a cold shower when you discover a different environment. You have to open up and listen to what’s going on to get out of the cocoon of your initial sport”.
- A retraining model that inspires you: “I really like what Thierry Ascione does, who was a Top 100 player, who had a great tennis career, and already as a young man he was interested in other things. During a career, it’s interesting to talk to sponsors, see how the outside world works and diversify. This makes it possible to move much faster for conversion. “
