When Emma Lunatti comes to the rescue, she's all in. So when she accepted the call from her coach at Aviron Grenoblois rowing club in Grenoble to return to the water "for a few months” after three years competing in national biathlon events, she wasn’t just making up the numbers. "It all happened so fast," says Emma Lunatti, who was 17 at the time. "My coach contacted me in spring 2016, and by June I was already competing at the French Junior Championships. Come September, I was racing against the seniors."

The young rower trained alongside "a terrific group" that included Léa Duret, who grew up close to Emma's family home, and Laura Tarantola, an SNCF athlete and Olympic silver medallist in the lightweight double sculls¹ at Tokyo 2020. "We're not just teammates on the water, we're close friends," explains Emma Lunatti. And it was Laura who told her about the SNCF Athletes Programme. At the time, Emma was looking for a way to combine her career in elite sports with a post-sports future—the security she needed to give her all on dry ground, not just on the water.

She applied and was hired by SNCF on 2 January 2023 as a special advisor on workplace wellbeing, working conditions and change management at its Optim'Services² unit. Now 24, Emma splits her time between the Campus Acrobates site at SNCF headquarters in Saint-Denis, north of Paris; rowing training in Grenoble in the French Alps; a business degree programme at the Grenoble École de Management; training camps with the French national team; international competitions; and training at the Pôle France rower training centre. 

All with one goal: qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

"Given my schedule, I'm all too familiar with trains," Emma laughs. "But seriously, as high-level athletes we generate a big carbon footprint as we jet around the world to compete, and we also consume a lot of energy and food. For me, working for a group like SNCF, with its commitment to the green transition, makes up for some of those transgressions. In fact, it’s very important to me. I wouldn’t have joined a company whose values didn’t match mine."

But SNCF’s eco-friendly ethos wasn't the only reason. Emma also likes the flexibility of the SNCF Athletes Programme and cherishes values such as "teamwork, goal-setting and resilience"—all of which she also finds out on the water. Today she cultivates her resilience by facing and overcoming the injuries that are part and parcel of competitive rowing. "I've had my share of problems, including back pain and stress fractures," she explains. But thanks to her dogged determination, the young oarswoman and her teammates qualified for Tokyo 2020, representing France in the quadruple sculls³ event at the Olympics.

It was quite a turnaround for the crew that had finished dead last at the World Championships two years earlier. "In the Olympic qualifying regattas in Lucerne, in May 2021, it was a high stakes mission," recalls Emma. Only a few months earlier, at the European Championships in Poznan, she’d been a substitute. But she was now the stroke, at the front of the boat—a position that requires unique qualities. "You have to feel the hull of the boat, ensure you perform a good catch, stay strong, and maintain a strong drive.”

It was one crazy race, as she describes it, and she and her crew finished second. More importantly, it was a career-defining moment that she describes even now as her "best memory as a rower". The context of that feat, during the Covid-19 pandemic, made it all the more memorable. "We trained for the championships in the French Jura region," says Emma. "Health restrictions prevented us from seeing anyone else for over 7 weeks. That's a long time. And it's very tough mentally, especially when you start feeling drained as the end of your Olympic preparations approaches." But Emma flew off to Japan with her quadruple sculls teammates – now her "second family".

Where suddenly, during her first Olympic experience, she found herself racing in a semi-final. An already extraordinary event became even more exhilarating when her friend Laura won a silver medal. "It was insane to watch her from the waterfront and be part of that special moment—and inspiring, too." Not to mention bumping into Novak Djokovic in the canteen at the Olympic village. "That's when it all sank in. I remember thinking 'I'm taking part in this competition, just like him.' It was crazy."

Keen to experience it all again and have her own moment in the limelight at Paris 2024, Emma is now fully focused on preparation. 

Her recipe: training camps with 25 hours a week of rowing and base training each week, with an additional 10–15 hours a week on the water, either on the River Marne with the Pôle France women’s team or on the River Isère with her club in Grenoble. Hard work that has paid off: after her impressive 2016 debut in high-level competition, Emma picked up a quadruple scull⁴ silver at the World Cup event in Zagreb in 2021 and became French single scull champion a year later.

It’s been a meteoric rise for Emma Lunatti, whose older brother Théo—also a rower—introduced her to the sport at Aviron Grenoblois. During middle school at Le Charmandier, she pursued rowing under the guidance of the school’s PE teacher Irène Bouchet, then switched briefly to biathlon in the French Prealps with her friends from Grenoble, before returning to the water. Emma Lunatti claimed the French single sculls title in 2022, then finished sixth in the double sculls at the World Championships in Belgrade. She has been selected by the French Rowing Federation and will compete in this category at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.