Eva Rucka, athlete, coach and founder of Les Gymnastes de l'île acrobatic gymnastics club, was inducted into the World Acrobatics Society Hall of Fame on September 7.

The 28th annual “Hall of Fame” banquet of the World Acrobatics Society was held at the Tuscany Casino & Suites in Las Vegas. The nine inductees of the Class of 2024, including Ms. Rucka, were selected for their high level of achievement and contributions to the acrobatic community on a national and global level.

Eva Rucka began her gymnastics career in her native Warsaw, Poland, where she quickly dominated the Women's Acrobatic Pairs event. Her specialties are tumbling and trampoline.

“I was chosen by my coach when I was at elementary school in Poland. About 30 youngsters were chosen, and after three months we were evaluated and the group was cut down to 15 and then 10 people. We had no recreational program in my communist country. The coaches were paid by the government. Training was very different from here. However, I knew that if I got good, I'd be able to travel,” confided Ms. Rucka during Neomedia's visit to a training session. 

Thanks to her sport, Eva Rucka has traveled to Russia, France, Germany and even Iraq.

She and her partner, Ewa Anderszewka, won the Polish National Championships in 1974, 1975, 1977 and 1978. They also won silver at the first European Championships in 1978, held in Riga, USSR, and bronze at the 1978 World Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria.

“I don't remember winning any medals, or even who gave them to me? But I do remember the sense of pride I had in being able to represent my country internationally.” 

Exile to America

While still a member of the Polish team, Eva Rucka was invited to take part in a training camp in the USA. “When I was 23, I was invited by a coach to go to the United States. It was the only way for us to leave the country. You had to have an invitation. When we were competing, the coaches kept our passports with them to make sure we got back home.

Eva Rucka arrived in the United States in the late 1970s and spent the next four years coaching acrobatic gymnastics in Quincy, Illinois, at Tri-City Acrosports, where she trained numerous national champions in the Age Group, Junior Elite and Elite categories in women's pairs and trios.

In 1983, her Elite women's pair won the USSF National Championships, earning them a place on the U.S. National Team for the World Cup. 

That same year, Rucka made Canada her permanent home.

“During the World Cup, I met some friends of mine from Poland who had come to compete. They told me they weren't going back to Poland. They were going to fly from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Montreal, and from there take another plane back to Poland. Their plan was simply not to fly to Warsaw and stay in Montreal to start an acrobatic gymnastics club. I already had my green card to work in the United States. So I could travel wherever I wanted. So I followed them,” she recounts wistfully.

Unable to find a place to set up the club, Eva Rocka and her companions finally made their way to the circus school on Papineau Street. “We went there to practice, but also to demonstrate the techniques of acrobatic gymnastics. So we taught Mr Guy Laliberté how to do acrobatic gymnastics. We did that right up to the creation of Cirque du Soleil,” adds the now 68-year-old athlete. 

The realization of a life

In 1998, Eva Rucka founded Canada's very first acrobatics club, Les Gymnastes de L'Île, in Notre-Dame-de-l'Île-Perrot. “One day, I met Pierre Crépeau. He had an African dance group, and one day he had the idea of incorporating circus movements. We called it Circa Danse. It went on for a few years, until Pierre retired. As the children wanted to continue, we moved to Notre-Dame-de-l'Île-Perrot to set up the club. At one point, we wanted to start competing, but there was no acrobatics in the Fédération de Gymnastique du Québec. So we started competing in tumbling and trampoline. 

In 2008, her women's trio was the first to represent Canada at an international competition in Glasgow, Scotland. Her women's duo then went on to compete at the 2010 World Championships in Wroclaw, Poland. 

“We had prepared the girls without knowing whether the Quebec Federation would allow us to represent Canada because the Canadian Federation didn't recognize acrobatics at that time. So, at the Quebec Gymnastics Championships, I asked the president if we could just demonstrate what our girls could do in acrobatics. He said yes, and the girls showed what they could do. People stood up. They were so impressed that they agreed to recognize acrobatics as a discipline within the Gymnastics Federation of Canada.“

After many years of hard work promoting the sport in Canada, it was a proud moment in 2010 when Rucka, accompanied by her husband André Cichalewska, a FIG judge, learned that acrobatics was officially recognized as a discipline within the Gymnastics Federation of Canada.

Today, Club de gymnastique les Gymnastes de l'Île continues its mission to promote acrobatic sports and counts several medal-winning athletes in its ranks, including Sophiane Méthot, who won bronze in trampoline at the Paris Olympic Games last August.