BoisColombes, France: When the Olympic torch relay begins in France in May, keep a look out for Charles Coste, France’s oldest living Olympic champion.
Coste, who turns 100 on February 8, won the men’s team cycling pursuit at the 1948 Olympics in London. He currently has terrible knees, but he hopes to contribute to Paris 2024.
“It will be unforgettable, and I’m very proud,” Coste told AFP.
“Now I need to prepare physically. I’m limited by my knees, but I’ll try to carry the flame for a few meters.”
Coste also intends to see the cycling in Paris, but even if that is a few months away, London ’48 is still fresh in his mind.
“They weren’t the grandiose Games of today,” adds Coste, who is far from the oldest living Olympic winner.
That accolade is now held by Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, who turned 103 on January 9.
“There were hardly any radios. We arrived only three days before the event.England was still traumatized by the war. London had been heavily bombed, and we were billeted at a US Air Force training camp. There was no Olympic Village. We didn’t get to know the other athletes very well because each discipline was housed separately.”
Coste was 23 years old at the time, and as France’s pursuit champion in 1947, he was selected captain of the squad that featured Serge Blusson, Pierre Adam, and Fernand Decanali, none of whom are still with Coste on the torch relay.
-‘Crowning glory’
“We raced several times on the London track to get to know it well,” Coste remarked.
“I was with my friends Blusson, Adam, and Decanali.” “Our team was strong and close-knit.”First, we needed to defeat the English, who were the favorites in front of their home fans.Then, in the final, I got off to a sluggish start, but we ramped up our pace from there, and the Italians eventually gave up.
“Getting the medal was the pinnacle of our achievements. “We realized our dream.My mother used to say that when I was 10 or 12, I told her I wanted to be a general or an Olympic champion.”
The cyclists received their medals – “in a box, not around your neck like today” – and a bouquet of flowers. However, due to organisational issues at the Herne Hill Velodrome, there was regret in the absence of an anthem.
“‘There won’t be a Marseillaise’ they said ‘because we can’t find the record!’,” stated Coste.
Coste received his Marseillaise two years ago, when he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur, albeit late.
“I would have liked General de Gaulle to have given it to me in 1952, but no one thought of me at the time,” says Coste, who turned professional a year later, competing twice in the Tour de France and winning the 1949 Grand Prix des Nations time trial.
“As I was the only Olympic champion who didn’t have the medal, it was given to me in 2022 and I chose Tony Estanguet to do it.”I am very grateful to him. He gave me a lovely Marseillaise. It was a tremendous honour for me. Tony Estanguet and I became buddies. We write to each other, and he occasionally calls me.
Estanguet, chief of the Paris Games organizing committee, made one of those calls, inviting athletes to carry the torch and pass it on to the next generation of Olympians.
