Charlotte Hym: 4 Years of Neuroscience PhD, Then Tokyo Olympics. How Do You Balance Both?

On November 22, 2019, Charlotte Hym defended her neuroscience thesis in Paris. Twenty months later, on July 26, 2021, she dropped in street at the Tokyo Games, the only Frenchwoman qualified in the event. Between the two, no sponsor was covering rent. Just a lab, a board, and a calendar.

How do you keep both without dropping one? The answer boils down to three concrete things. We nailed it.

Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, 13 years old: a skateboard for her birthday

Charlotte grew up in the 11th, between Bastille and République. At about 13, she saw the skaters in the neighborhood and asked for a board for her birthday. She told the Big Spin Podcast in 2022: first ollies on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir with her middle‑school friends. “We were struggling like everyone else.”

In her middle school, there's Kevin Rodriguez, already solid, and the whole crew watches him. Charlotte learns on the street, not in a park. And next to it, she plays competitive badminton for years.

At high school, they push her toward an engineering school. She heads to a sports university: a STAPS license in 2013, a neuroscience master's in 2015 at Paris Descartes. First research stint: balance in older adults. For a skater, the topic doesn’t fall from the sky.

Paris Descartes, 2015: the lab that already had a baby‑skate

They introduce her to Marianne Barbu‑Roth, a researcher studying how newborns move. The lab does motion capture on babies a few days old, and works on a device the team jokingly calls a “newborn skateboard”: a tiny board where the baby propels itself on all fours.

Her future supervisor found it “super appropriate” that she skated. The thesis is titled Effect of maternal factors on the quadrupedal locomotion of the newborn: does the mother’s voice or scent change how a newborn starts to crawl. Four years of work.

Late 2016: the French team drops in mid‑thesis

Summer 2016, the IOC announces skateboarding for the Tokyo Games. By the end of 2016, the federation fields a French team with the most likely profiles. Charlotte is part of it, right as she starts her thesis.

Rewind a bit. In 2015, Para la Vida was dropping clips for Parisian skaters: a full video with friends, a girl sending as much as the guys. Nobody knew she spent her days analyzing the posture of three‑day‑old babies. You’d watch the line, rewind, and watch her again.

The Olympic qualifier, she snags it by the skin of her teeth: around 23rd or 24th worldwide, bumped up to 18th through country quotas. Only Frenchwoman in street, while Aurélien Giraud and Vincent Milou carry street for the guys.

The deal with her advisor: the laptop in the bag

During the thesis, the schedule is brutal: full‑time in the lab, skate in the evenings, summer or winter, and weekends.

What unlocks it all is one person. “My thesis advisor was super understanding,” she told Old Skullz in 2023. A contest or a trip? Marianne Barbu‑Roth lets her go. Because she knows the work follows: “she knows I bring my laptop, I’m reachable everywhere.”

Four years of thesis sounds like a delay caused by skate. Nope: most PhDs take four years, sport or not. Skate just filled the other hours.

Tokyo 2021, 17th: what the Games really paid off

With the thesis in hand, she takes a break from research to prep for the Games, a year‑long pause extended by Covid. And few people say it: without the Games, she wasn’t living off skate. “I didn’t have the sponsors that let me make a living from skate.” The Olympic athlete status opens up regional, departmental, and city support.

In Tokyo, no crowd, daily Covid tests, a shared flat with two French kayakers. She finished 17th in the event won by 13‑year‑old Momiji Nishiya. The same day, Margielyn Didal finished 7th and had the whole skate world smiling.

So how do we keep both going?

The answer isn’t magical. One: a director who says yes to trips and judges on the work delivered, not on hours present. Two: an amateur athlete schedule kept for four years, evenings and weekends. Three: knowing when to cut. A break before the Games, then back in March 2022 as a part‑time post‑doc in the same team. They offered her full time, she said it’d be tough. Three days in the lab, the rest on the board.

Proof in pictures: three months after returning to the lab, she drops a new track with Ben Aurélien, Part Deux - 2022.

What does research bring her to the board? She doesn’t sell it as a method. But when she learns a trick, she says, “Can you film me five takes?” She reviews, judges the move, corrects: a motion‑capture lab, iPhone version. Add Ben Aurélien’s advice, “everyone’s scared,” and you’ve got a skater who treats fear as data, not failure.

Today, a 20‑year‑old skater weighing studies against sessions is likely to hear Charlotte Hym, or Alexis Sablone, architect and Olympian. The double life is no longer an exception. It’s a plan.

She missed the Paris 2024 qualifiers in her city. In 2023 she said, “I just want to be able to skate every day and keep doing it as long as possible.” With a PhD in hand, she doesn’t need a podium for that.