Florent Lecoanet

Florent Lecoanet (7/2/1984) is a French Mario Kart player and by many considered to be the greatest Super Mario Kart player in history. Florent has been GP Champion in PAL since March 2006, only overtaken very briefly once by Sébastien Holmière in the summer of 2006. He extended his GP dominance to NTSC in January 2007 and has not really been threatened there since. Furthermore Florent has won 1 Championnat de France (2007) (Abbreviated to CDF, French Championship in English). In various CDF events since 2005 he gathered 2 gold medals in GP (2006, 2007), 2 gold medals in Match Race (2006, 2007), 1 gold medal in Battle Mode (2007), 1 silver medal and 1 bronze medal in Time Trial (2007 and 2006 respectively). He also ranked second at the CDF in 2006. He won his first international event when he became Super Mario Kart champion at the Next Level Gaming Championships (NLG) held in Norway in July 2007. He has also driven several WR’s in Time Trial (for both PAL and NTSC) and is currently ranked 4th in PAL and 10th in NTSC. He drove (PAL) WR’s in Non NBT competition as well and in this field he is currently ranked 9th in PAL and 7th in NTSC.

Early life

Florent was born in Rennes, France. He grew up in Montauban-de-Bretagne, a small town near Rennes. It’s there where he started playing SMK around 1994/1995, reaching respectable times of 1’02”00 and 12”30 on Mario Circuit 1 (PAL Non NBT) back then. The internet era had not taken off by then yet, so these achievements were reached without being aware of competition elsewhere and without watching any strategy videos. After these initial results he did not play SMK again until 2005.

The MKDD connection

The release of Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (MKDD) in 2003 would eventually change everything, but not directly. It was not until 2005, when one of Florent’s friends bought a Nintendo Gamecube with MKDD, that Florent became interested in kart again. He played MKDD for 3 months and at some point he started wondering how well his times would hold up against competitors from all over the world. After a quick internet search he found the various Mario Kart websites, but more importantly this search would also lead him to the website of the CDF, a French competition entirely dedicated to his old favourite SMK. This motivated him to go back to the roots and he dusted off his old SNES and plugged in SMK. As he started playing he found out that all his old PR’s were erased (something that is known to happen with cartridges over the years unfortunately), but this initial disappointment was quickly overcome when he rediscovered how much fun playing SMK actually was.

Master of the LB

It was not before long until Florent learned about the art of mushroom generated Long Boosts (LB’s) and quickly specialized himself in this technique. This specialization would soon become a fruit bearing one, allowing him to hit his first ever GP WR, taking down Camille Batier’s (a French karter also known as Don Camillo and mostly known for his GP skills) MC1 flap, with an LB aided record of 7”76. Later on he would drive countless more LB involved GP WR’s and also create a couple of video compilations demonstrating the use of LB’s nicely, one of them can be found here.

CDF 2005

Florent’s first GP WR came right before the start of the CDF 2005 (which was the first CDF he participated in). Because his name was on the list of participants, many people were wondering who this new kid on the block was: the newcomer who beat one of Don Camillo’s most prolific WR’s. This created a fuzz amongst the karters present and they could soon observe a new star in the making. Outside of Mushroom Cup GP and some Battle Mode practice, Florent was relatively unexperienced playing against other players, but he still performed quite well, ending on an 11th position in the overall ranking of the tournament. He almost caused an upset by beating Harold Christensen in the Battle Mode quarter final. At this point in time Harold was already an accomplished Battle Mode player and well known for his skills in this mode; in other words a clear favourite to win that tournament. In his match against Harold however, Florent was leading 5-3, much to the shock of the karter’s watching. In the end Harold’s experience proved a little too much as he came back to proceed to the semi final with a 7-5 win.

World Wide Kart meet London 2006

In the summer of 2006, the webmaster of the SMK Time Trial site, Sami Çetin, hosted a world wide kart meet in Croydon, London, UK. Florent attended this event and this was the first time he travelled outside of France to meet fellow karters. He wore a T-shirt specifically designed for this event, a gesture that was greeted with much enthusiasm by the other karters. At this point he had already become a strong force to be reckoned with in SMK, but he still lacked a little experience against the likes of Pierre L’Hoëst and Sami Çetin, thus losing to them marginally in Match Race. He did however pull out a 10-10 tie against the PAL Time Trial Champion at that time, Karel van Duijvenboden.

CDF 2006

The CDF 2006 saw Florent step up as a great ambassador of SMK as he literally saved the event that year. The organisation did not succeed in finding a venue for the CDF of 2006 and it looked like it would get cancelled. However, as a last resort, Florent offered the final solution by actually letting the players use his appartment as the venue. As the host, he surpassed the expectations of many by winning both the GP and Match Race tournaments. This was against the odds, as prior to this CDF it was Pierre L’Hoëst who singlehandedly ruled the three previous CDF events with an iron fist. Pierre still managed to win the overall classement of the CDF 2006 version, but it was very close, with Florent finishing just behind in 2nd position. His amazing skill and talent was becoming increasingly more evident and most karters agreed that it would only be a question of time now before he would win some major prizes.

NLG Norway 2007

Florent effectively became the World Champion of Match Race by winning the SMK tournament at the Next Level Gaming Championships, which was held in Orkanger (Norway), July 2007. He beat his eternal rival Pierre L’Hoëst in a historically thrilling semi final and secured the victory by beating SMK veteran Sami Çetin in the final with a convincing 10-5 win. He also took part in various other tournaments and delivered an especially fine performance in the Circuit Breakers tournament. He almost made the final round, which featured the 4 best players, but in the end he lost out to Patrick Wessels in the deciding semi final tie-breaker.

CDF 2007

Because of his success in Norway, Florent entered the CDF of 2007 as one of the two clear favourites to win. It was expected that the overall win would either go to Pierre or him. The rivalry between the two became clear from the very start as they faced eachother in the final of the first event, which was the TT tournament. This final took place on one of his favourite tracks, KB1, but the pressure got to him as he hit some weed and ended in 2nd place with Pierre grabbing the first gold medal of that CDF with a clean race. Florent made his candidacy for the overall win clear early on though. In the Match Race tournament he faced Pierre in the final again, but this time the gold medal went to Florent after a convincing 11-7 in his favour. This was his first ever gold medal on a CDF. The Battle Mode tournament saw another Pierre versus Florent final. The level on display was extremely high and to this day Florent claims that the level he reached in this match was the highest he has ever reached as an SMK player. Despite Pierre’s strong resistance and fine form, Florent proved to be an unstoppable force from now on, winning the tournament in style with a 11-4 victory. Florent was comfortably in the lead in the overall rankings now, with his best mode (GP) still ahead. Only a miracle could stop him from winning his first CDF from that point onwards. When Florent reached the semi final of the GP tournament (Pierre was knocked out at this point), he was already certain of the overall victory. But as a true champion he gave it his best once more to also claim the title in the GP final in a thrilling early morning match against Nicolas Haufmann (also known as El Nico on the boards). Nicolas could not prevent Florent from reaching a landslide 5-1 victory, meaning that Florent succesfully crowned his CDF with another gold medal. Rarely had the CDF seen such a display of dominance from one karter, winning all the multiplayer modes with big scorelines plus reaching the final of the TT event as well.

Time Trial

Florent joined the SMK Players’ Site on the 7th of August of 2005 with a #85 world rank. Although not a Time Trial expert to begin with, he has made his mark in that competition as well by climbing as high up as #3 in PAL, a position he reached in January 2006 (currently he is ranked 4th). Moreover he won the highly acclaimed Player of the Year (POY) award in 2006, a victory he secured by driving his first ever Time Trial WR in PAL on 22 December of the same year; a 9”37 WR tie at KB1 flap. One month before that, on the 13th of November, he had already driven his first ever Time Trial WR on NTSC with a 11”52 GV2 flap. He joined the NTSC side of the competition a few months prior to getting his first WR there, in September 2006, entering in a high position at #12 on the ladder. The highest rank he ever reached in NTSC so far was 7th during December 2006 (he is currently ranked 10th). He currently holds 6 WR’s in PAL and 1 WR in NTSC. He also participates in SMK Non-NBT competition at the Non-NBT Players’ Site, which is an old school SMK competition that limits the use or abuse of zigzag boosting. He joined the PAL ladder of this site in October 2005 in 31st position. He joined the NTSC part of the rankings 1 year later in October 2006 in 24th position. To further demonstrate his all-round SMK ability he also hit WR’s in this competition, the first one being the VL1 5-lap WR (with a time of 50”88) on November 14, 2007. He currently holds 3 Non NBT WR’s and is ranked 9th in PAL and 7th in NTSC on the Non-NBT Players’ Site.

Professional life

In daily life Florent is studying to become either a physical education (PE) teacher or an overall teacher at elementry school. He studied 5 years in Angers, 1 year in Le Mans and from 8 September 2008 onwards he will study 1 year in his city of birth, Rennes. One thing is certain, whoever his students are going to be, they don’t stand even the smallest chance of winning when they play against their teacher in SMK, or Tennis for that matter…

The Federer comparison

Much to the amusement of a lot of people in his environment (and not in the least place to his own amusement), Florent’s appearance resembles that of Roger Federer (the greatest tennis player in history, a global sports icon) like two drops of water. With both Roger and Florent being dominant forces in their respective competitions and Florent being an avid tennis player himself, his peers soon nicknamed him “the Roger Federer of SMK”. The comparison doesn’t stop with their appearance, love for tennis and dominance in their game though. Like Roger, Florent is a graceful champion loved by supporters and rivals alike and a great ambassador of his sport. For example he hosted the CDF of 2006 in his appartment as a last resort to save the event from cancellation and creates a variety of SMK related promotion videos, such as fast lap compilations, CDF trailers, year summaries and more (you can watch some of his videos here).

Message Board personality

Florent is an enthusiastic poster on the various message boards dedicated to Mario Kart. He is known on these fora as Neo, nicknamed after his favourite movie character Neo from the Matrix Trilogy. Funnily enough, when he entered a picture of himself in a face recognition program to find out which celebrities his face matched the most, both Roger Federer and Keanu Reaves (actor that plays Neo in the Matrix) popped up in the final results. Florent’s replies on the MB are often mixed in a layer of sexual humour; for example he claims that his dick size is only measurable in earth to moon distance units and one of his MB friends, Guilherme Arantes, is quoted saying that: “Florent is a sex machine.” Moreover his MB signature used to be “When things look bad, I just remember that I've got a real big dick, and things seem much better”.

Other games

Florent is a not a typical gamer and does not play a wide variety of games. Apart from SMK he loves playing Circuit Breakers and recently Pro Evolution Soccer, but more for fun than to really excell in them. He is however one of the best in the world at another classic Nintendo game, Super Mario Bros, being within seconds of the speedrun WR and holding the French Record.

Future

With his all-round SMK ability many people expect that he will keep on winning the CDF for years to come (with the influx of competitors from outside of France the CDF will be known as CDE from 2008 onwards; CDE being an abbreviation of Championnat d’Europe, meaning Championship of Europe in English). With him being the man to beat now, he is in a totally different position then the one he was used to be in. It will be interesting to see if he can withstand this added pressure of living up to these expectations and keep on controlling the SMK scene for years to come.