Jazy.
A name that Claude Nougaro could have made dance.
Michel Jazy, a clear-eyed ephebe with light and powerful strides, was “the angel of the track”, as Alain Billouin wrote (Editions Prolongation).
With a diaphanous face, he, with flexibility and efficiency, bewitched the slopes and the undergrowth in the 1960s and made France dream in tandem with Jacques Anquetil.
In the middle of the 1950s and 1960s, these two masters of the clock made up, with the Reims stadium, Just Fontaine, Raymond Kopa and the heroes of the 1958 World Cup, the pillars of French sport.
Nothing can resist him.
With an iron will, the Northerner will make the middle distance a vast playground. From 800 to 5,000 m, he collects, in addition to titles and medals, 9 world records, 17 European records and 43 French records.
He discovered the Olympic Games in 1956 in Melbourne, covered by Alain Mimoun.
Eliminated in the 1,500m heats, he shares the training sessions, drawing inspiration from the rigor of the man who was going to win gold in the marathon.
Four years later, Michel Jazy won the silver medal in the 1,500 m at the Rome Games (behind Australian Herb Elliott).
On October 18, 1964, in Tokyo, Olympic gold could not slip through his fingers.
Michel Jazy, mature athlete has a date with glory (“I would have bet then that I was champion…”).
France set its alarm in the middle of the night to listen with its ears glued to the radio to the story of the 5,000m launched in the middle of the afternoon in Japan.
The French champion's night was turbulent.
The race is already running, the body is boiling, the panic is eating away at it, the event is devouring it.
“I got up at 11 o'clock in the evening and went to meet my wife who was staying at a hotel in the city center.
I had 15 kilometers to go.
I went there and came back running,” he told L’Equipe.
When he wakes up, behind the curtains, the rain whips him, showers him, darkens his eyes, drowns his destiny.
The dream flounders in a distressing chiaroscuro.
However, the race is going (almost) according to his plans.
The Frenchman, slim silhouette crossed out with No. 214, emaciated face, planned to attack 250 m from the finish.
Before letting yourself be carried away by a short-lived euphoria.
At the bell for the last lap, he tore up his plans, gave in to impatience, accelerated, broke away, flew, before suffering a sudden fuel shortage 150 m from the line.
Wings broken, splendor faded, he struggles with the track, his stride sinks, he settles down, sees the line moving away, refusing.
The nodding head illustrates the deep distress that grips him, bites him, threatens to bury him.
With the little strength he has, he maintains hope for a moment but quickly sees the flame of his dreams flicker, then go out.
The American Robert Schul (13 min 48 sec 8), then the German Harald Norpoth (13 min 49 sec 6) and another American, William Dellinger (13 min 49 sec 8) overtake him.
Michel Jazy (13 min 49 sec 8), groggy like a boxer after a volley of punches, fails at the foot of the podium.
The blow is violent, the pain dull.
The sharp cut-off.
Stupors and tremors... Michel Jazy, white as a candle, struggles to gather his thoughts.
So stunned, that not a single tear comes to hollow this papier-mâché face.
A distress captured by Raymond Depardon.
The photo shows the broken champion, his body folded in half, his face hidden in his forearms.
Philippe Delerm, in Le Figaro, spoke of the “sad beauty” of the moment.
A bloodless Jazy discovers the acrid scent of defeat.
“I came to be Olympic champion or nothing (…) You are alone.
Alone after the line, alone in your room in the village.
I stayed four days in Tokyo even though my wife had already left.
I walked tirelessly in the training stadium... I had decided to stop athletics.
But at Orly, five thousand people were waiting for me at the airport.
I was given three mailbags.
I unpacked everything on my bed.
In some envelopes, there was money so that I could buy myself a medal…”, he slipped to Olivier Margot in “Le temps des Légendes” (JC Lattès).
Some insisted on its bankruptcy, France loved the shared momentum, the violence and the strength of mixed feelings.
Cruel, the defeat could be beautiful.
The French delegation brought back 15 medals from Tokyo (including gold in horse riding for Pierre Jonquères d'Oriola, silver in swimming for Christine Caron) but the crowd only had eyes for the one who was content to brush against the stars.
The supporters who vibrated, trembled, suffered, madly shared the moving epilogue.
The unexpected support warms the athlete, puts him back in the saddle.
Michel Jazy will find his wind soles again.
In 1965, he set four world records and ten European records.
Jazy becomes a huge popular figure.
His races, his record attempts, are broadcast live on television, cut into the 8 p.m. news or variety shows, he manages to steal the spotlight from Gilbert Bécaud.
Jazy got up but the cursed Tokyo race will never leave him.
He will publish “my victories, my defeats, my life”.
With on the cover placed above the French team's tracksuit the smile of the one who hasn't sorted it out, like Charles Aznavour singing “my friends, my loves, my troubles”…
Jazy, the national defeat.
Shared with Raymond Poulidor, then AS Saint-Etienne, the Seville Blues and many others.
Like Laurent Fignon, beaten by 8 seconds by Greg LeMond during the last stage of the 1989 Tour de France, after a time trial on the Champs-Elysées.
Cyrille Guimard's runner told us that the episode had never left him: "The following winter, I had dinner with Michel Jazy who told me: ''From now on, we will only talk to you about that.
As for me, people only talk to me about the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Never my records or my titles.'' He was right.
This bothered me deeply at first, but it made me feel worse that I lost than that I won.
»
Michel Jazy in 2019 JB Autissier / Panoramic / JB Autissier / Panoramic
Michel Jazy knew that touching the hearts of the crowds would remain his most precious trophy.
He retired on October 12, 1966 after a final world record over 2,000 m at the Chéron stadium, in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, in Val-de-Marne: “A special stadium, protected from the wind, where we could reach the public by reaching out their hand,” he summarized to Le Parisien.
A shared stage exit a few days later with Jacques Brel.
During an exchange in his dressing room at the Olympia, the singer confided: “Running is a desire.
Running is giving a gift, it is an act of love.
» Jazy, before attending the Belgian poet's last round of singing, replied: “Running is the way I have found to express myself most fully.
In a team sport, I could not have done what I did.
I got used to the idea of now being separated from this crowd and the people who expect so much.
»
After a shower of records and a torrent of Olympic tears, Michel Jazy could turn the page.
“Rarely has an athlete offered such pure style.
With an elegant stride that yielded nothing to efficiency, giving the impression of exploring the track, of flying over it, Michel Jazy, during the 1960s, occupied the forefront of world athletics accumulating victories, exploits and performances,” wrote Gérard Du Peloux in Le Figaro.
Olympic gold would never shine on his chest, but the grandson and son of a Polish miner, raised in Oignies, in the settlements, had had a profound impact on people's minds.
At the end of a long journey strewn with pitfalls for the one who was nicknamed the "zebra of the settlements", memory of the belt blows given to the thighs by a teacher angry at not seeing the lessons begin.
At ten years old, little “Michal” (his first name in Polish) sneaks into a village race for adults and finishes 28th: “I took off my clogs to go faster, I won five francs and a round of “bumper cars but I found running really stupid,” the man who dreamed of becoming a professional football player told Le Monde.
He obtained his study certificate as a free candidate before going to Paris where his mother started a new life.
Athletics will not let the phenomenon roam around on the football fields for long...
Far from the disillusionment of Tokyo, Michel Jazy was then a big brother protector of the event and the tension of an Olympic final when Guy Drut, who had lived on the same street as him in Oignies, was preparing to plunge into the race of a life in Montreal, in 1976. In the hours preceding the Olympic 110m hurdles final, Drut had benefited from the calm and experience of a wise man who had forgotten nothing of the Tokyo paddling pool, dark and distressing hours preceding the shattered Olympic ambition.
In the shadow of a budding career, Michel Jazy was a typographer at the newspaper L'Equipe, before taking care of communications and public relations for Perrier, Le Coq Sportif and Adidas, then becoming president and administrator of the Parc of Princes.
In recent years, he enjoyed the gentleness of Hossegor and the memories of a rich career: “At the time, we just won medals or small gifts.
I was only 30 when I quit so I could work and support my family.
The evening of my farewells, I had at least 80 transistors to sell,” said the man who remained haunted by the memory of Tokyo to Ouest-France.
A nightmarish night in France, before a gray day for an inconsolable country…