Receiving the title of WMA Best Athlete for the year 2025 is a huge honor for me, but also a great responsibility. I am fully aware that other Masters, sometimes younger and facing particularly intense competition, deserve just as much, if not more, to be honored. This title is not only a reward for an exceptional performance, but also a recognition of perseverance, versatility and sportsmanship throughout a career. Beyond a single feat, he values a lasting passion for athletics and respect for other competitors.

The year 2025 was marked by highlights, mainly during indoor and outdoor track races. After the cancellation of the World Championships in Toronto in 2020 and 2021, and then the long absence from competitions during the COVID-19 period, I took a step back from road racing and refocused my efforts on the track. I had set ambitious goals for my 85th birthday, and it was with great satisfaction that I achieved them: at the World Indoor Championships in Gainesville I won six gold medals, and at the European Stadium Championships in Madeira, eight gold medals crowned my efforts.

Among the greatest satisfactions, the M85 world records in the middle distance occupy a special place, because they value performance even when the number of participants is low. In addition, the set of M85 world records, obtained indoors and outdoors over different distances, testifies to my versatility and commitment. These results carry a message: Masters athletics rewards above all passion, tenacity and the ability to constantly set new challenges, regardless of age or competition.

I’m proud to have been successful in races that aren’t my specialty, such as the 200m sprint and the 60m and 200m hurdle races.

I was trained in athletics from a very young age at school, where I went most often by running. After cross-country and outdoor track races, road races developed and I participated in them by gradually lengthening the distances, while working on my speed. So the first marathons after 40 years old to cap at 2H34′ between 44 and 45 years old. The first 100 KM delayed by five years following a stress fracture of a tibia only at the age of 67.

In my preparation, apart from the concern to avoid injury, I favor the regularity of the training with a reduction in distances and frequency.

Either 3 sessions per week or 4 in a more intensive period depending on a running training rather than an athletics track and the practice of all paces. I more or less respect cycles depending on the competitions with progression over 3 weeks and a week of recovery.

For the mental side, I set myself reasonable performances to achieve in competition with certain deadlines and the rest follows during competitions where you must not give up. My preparation is somewhat disrupted because I have to help my wife with reduced mobility and my sleep lacks quality.

Above all, I have built my successes myself, often far from the site of my clubs and therefore from the coaches as well as from athletics facilities. In the master’s degree, I motivate myself in a younger running group and I add some specific personal sessions on the track. For the former masters, the coaches do not necessarily know the reaction of the bodies and it is the athlete who, by listening to his body, manages to better dose his efforts.

In 2026, it should be my last track season, unless my career ends in 2027 in Jyväskylä, where it will have been fifteen years since I won my first four world masters titles in a beautiful way. I would probably go to Torun at the European Masters Indoor Championships with another busy schedule, but not to Daegu that I knew in 2017. Gradually, I should participate in slower and longer races, less violent for the heart, but perhaps more traumatic for the musculature and in particular the heels affected by Aponeuritis. It’s not sure that I’ll be able to do a last marathon on the 5th, 10th, half-marathon road and without guarantee a last marathon, the 64th, at the Masters World Championships on October 11th in Zagreb.

Apart from sport, which takes up my time as an athlete, but also as a manager and judge, I am a caregiver for my wife who is losing her autonomy and after managing everything there is not much time left for leisure activities. The 4th of thirteen siblings, it is important to me to participate in family gatherings where the reunion is good for morale.

I also like the travel and tourism that have sometimes been carried out in tandem with my sports trips during the international masters championships, but also during my marathons in Budapest, Rio de Janeiro, New York of course, but also Beijing and all of France.

As you can see, I am an atypical runner who has to work on both resistance and endurance to practice all distances at 86 years old. When I was younger, I didn’t find myself in the ideal conditions to be a very good runner, but only a good runner who only reached his best level around the age of 45, the age when muscle mass starts to decrease. My weak point was the recurrent tendinopathy of the Achilles tendons between the ages of 24 and 77, which was finally solved with an injection of Platelet-Rich Plasma.

I also had to bounce back at the age of 31 after a long break following a serious car accident that still marks me physically (missing piece in the right tibia which was used as a graft to repair the right arm still not entirely able), but especially morally with the death of my little brother in this accident.

Another highlight was that in August 2016 I was saved from drowning in the sea on the Breton coast and two months later I had great results at the World Championships in Perth.

I was also called the gold digger: 38 gold medals, including one with the cross country team at the World Championships between 2012 and 2025 and 29 individual gold medals at the European Masters Championships.

In 75 years of sporting events, we could write a book.