Cécile Hernandez

Today, for this second week of a Friday, a woman in the spotlight, we are going to talk about the Frenchwoman, Cécile Hernandez, paralympic snowboard champion. Born in Perpignan, in the south of France, on June 19, 1974, the young Cécile practiced at that time BMX and snowboarding as an able-bodied person.

Outside of sport, the young woman later sets up her communication and sports event company.

On October 21, 2002, Cécile Hernandez’s life tips over as she wakes up, a total and sudden paralysis of the lower limbs no longer allows her to get up. This paralysis is due to a flare-up of the disease from which the Frenchwoman suffers, multiple sclerosis; this situation will persist for several months, forcing her to adapt her daily life.

Until 2005, this paralysis will force her to move in a wheelchair, before beginning a rehabilitation, which will take several years, allowing her subsequently the resumption of a sporting practice. During these years, Hernandez will become a journalist covering several sporting events and a writer.

It is in December 2013, eleven years after her forced stop from sport, that we find Hernandez in para-snowboarding following a meeting with a member of the France para-snowboard team during one of her reports, produced in Valmorel. This meeting is going to allow her to realize that a disability did not necessarily mean the end of a sporting career.

She obtains her place in the French delegation in 2014 on the occasion of the Sochi Winter Paralympic Games. On March 14, 2014, it is the consecration; only three months after her resumption, the snowboarder clinches a silver medal in category LL1. It is a first for France, which had never yet won a medal in the paralympic snowboard event. 2014 is definitely a year to engrave; she is decorated Knight of the National Order of Merit by the President of the French Republic, François Hollande, on June 15, 2014.

During this same season, she will add to her beautiful record of achievements a crystal globe. The end of her sporting season will be signed by a title of world champion of banked slalom at La Molina on the occasion of the worlds and a title of vice-world champion of boardercross, the same week.

The 2015-2016 season continues under the best auspices; Cécile then signs ten victories in European cups and world cup, seven of them in this last competition with a total of nine podiums. Two crystal globes come to add themselves to this collection, one for the leader of the world general classification and a second for her world first place in banked slalom.

In January 2017, she obtains her selection for the France team for the second time in her career at the Games, in order to take part in the Pyeongchang Paralympic Games, during which she will clinch a silver medal and one of bronze.

She learns in 2021 that her disability category LL1 is suppressed for the Beijing Olympic Games, following a lack of participants in this category.

In 2022, Cécile Hernandez joins the very select 40 Forbes Women, putting in the spotlight the 40 most influential women of the year.

The 2025-2026 season is synonymous with injury; she suffers then from a ligament rupture as well as two ankle sprains. She will nevertheless manage to win two medals during the world championships and the big crystal globe of the season, a new consecration for the Frenchwoman.

At the age of 51, she participates in the 2026 Winter Paralympic Games, where she is also flag-bearer of the French delegation. It is on March 8, 2026, on Italian lands, that she then becomes double paralympic champion in snowboard cross.

She announces wanting to take her retirement after these Milan-Cortina Games, notably due to the evolution of her disease and the associated pains worsening with age.

Cécile Hernandez gives a message of hope to all disabled persons or those suffering from motor problems, proving that with desire, passion and tenacity nothing is impossible.

Written by Naëlle Verschoren