The man who was the first white sprinter to run the 100 metres in under 10 seconds announced this Thursday that he was giving up high-level sprinting.
The end of a great career. and one of the most beautiful pages of French athletics. The Frenchman Christophe Lemaitre, the first white sprinter to have run the 100 meters under 10 seconds, announced this Thursday in the team et the Parisian his sporting retirement. The three-time individual European champion and Olympic and world bronze medalist stopped running at 34. A decision taken in May during a meeting in Athens where he was injured, which prevented him from trying his luck for qualifying for the Paris Olympic Games.
In the team, he explains that “the results were not following” despite “good quality training”. Then a calf injury came «annihil [er] the last hopes. “The body couldn’t keep up,” summarizes the one who was bronze medalist at the Rio Olympics in 2016, over 200 meters, a distance over which he still holds the French record (19.80). In 2010, at the European Championships in Barcelona, the young sprinter (he was 20 at the time) made an impression by achieving a 100 m – 200 m – 4 × 100 m triple. In between, the Savoyard sprinter also collected a world medal, another bronze in the 200 m in 2011, and five European medals, including a second title in the 100 m in 2012, plus silver in the 200 m and bronze in the 100 m in 2014.
After this high-level retirement, the Frenchman told Parisian want to retrain by obtaining a diploma “in the Metz region to be a sports coach”. He will continue to do athletics «pour [s] we enjoy”, he specifies.
