It took a few months for Michel Jazy – who never missed an athletics competition, in his leather armchair, in front of his television – to relive, vicariously and at home, the magic of the Olympic Games. Olympic vice-champion in the 1,500m in Rome, 1960, 4e over 5,000 m at the Tokyo Games in 1964, author of nine world records, eighteen European records and forty-nine French records, from 800 to 5,000 m, the northern half-distance runner with an aerial stride flew away, Thursday 1er February, at the age of 87, at Dax hospital (Landes).
A visit to Michel Jazy, based for decades in Hossegor (Landes), where he liked to play the golf ball, was both the assurance of treating yourself to a meal and a fascinating dive into the Gaullian France of the 1960s. During this decade, the blond and skinny miler with the face of an angel got into trouble with Michel Bernard, also a Northerner, four years his senior. The chronicle of their rivalry at Poulidor-Anquetil fascinates the French and makes the small screen famous.
In the summer of 2016, to discuss his multifaceted life and his career as a champion, Michel Jazy, who had been angry with jogging for a long time, received The world in his Landes apartment over homemade tapas and rosé wine. “You’re drinking, I hope.”, he then says. Resolutely grabbing the bottle, he jokes about the heart attack which, a little too good-natured, he survived in the 1980s. He also makes fun of the diabetes and kidney failure that undermine him. and the afternoon flies by. The destiny of “Michal” – the Polish baptismal name of someone who only obtained French nationality at the age of 18 – is truly extraordinary.
Born into a family of Polish miners from Oignies (Pas-de-Calais), Jazy was raised by his maternal grandparents, who were non-French speaking, in the same street where, in 1950, Guy Drut, who became Olympic champion in 110 m hurdles, in 1976, was born. His mother divorced very early from his father, also a minor and who died of silicosis. To keep the pot boiling, she works in Lille then in Paris, far from her son.
The “zebra of the settlements”
Considered a dunce by the national education system, Michal is a hyperactive child. He showed an inclination for running very early on, but like all the kids from the settlement, he only swore by football. Also the idea of chasing a timer rather than a ball seems incongruous to him. Nicknamed the “corons zebra” both for his endurance and for the marks of blows from a rigid teacher, he makes it a point of honor to obtain his “certif” (his study certificate) as a free candidate, to the great satisfaction of his mother. Fearing that he would die “deep down” like so many other men in his circle, she repatriated him to Paris.
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