Thibaut Collet, the double heir of the French pole vault

Thibaut Collet at the European Athletics Championships in Rome on June 12, 2024.

The old tennis hall looks like an old airplane hangar. But instead of housing rickety cuckoos, it houses a run-up track, a jumping area and an impressive stock of poles. This outdated facility, located in the Isère commune of Montbonnot-Saint-Martin, is the domain of Thibaut Collet. It allowed him to avoid the wind – the enemy of pole vaulters – which is blowing at the beginning of April, despite the spring sunshine. The athlete has just completed an intense session, around thirty jumps, of a “high average in quality”according to his father and trainer Philippe Collet, former French record holder in the discipline.

On Saturday, August 3, the 25-year-old Frenchman will tackle the qualifications for the final of the Olympic pole vault tournament. Thibaut Collet is competing in his first Games in Paris, but he knows that his status has already changed since he cleared 5.90 meters at the World Championships in Budapest in 2023, finishing 5e of the event. A progression that continued this winter with a bar at 5.92 meters, during the All-Star Perche meeting, organized by Renaud Lavillenie, 37 years old, in Clermont-Ferrand, on February 22.

That day, the Isérois had made ” complaining “ his compatriot with emotion, before failing by a whisker at 6.02 meters. “It was important to confirmhe explains. I can reach bars that can be converted into medals in major championships.”

“Dad, I’m the boss now.”

As calm as he is determined, the young man must deal with a double heritage: that of his father and that of Renaud Lavillenie, whose successor he represents in France and with whom he shares training sessions, under the leadership of the former pole vaulter Philippe d’Encausse, in Clermont-Ferrand, when he is not in his Isère stronghold.

Thibaut Collet is now a pole vaulter who counts, even more so since he cleared 5.95 meters on June 19, at home in Grenoble, a month and a half before the Games and only a few days after his 5th place at the European Championships in Rome. Before that, as he humorously said, he still hadn’t “the toilet record”.

By this we mean that his father held the family reference, thanks to a jump of 5.94 meters, achieved on March 10, 1990. In Grenoble, after his performance, Thibaut teased Philippe: “Dad, I’m the boss now!” Here he is freed from a refrain that everyone kept reminding him of. “I take it as a game, something cool and fun, the person concerned reacted. “He’s teasing me, he’s my father. I tell him: ‘The day I beat you, I’m not talking to you anymore!'”

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