Tokyo 2020: last challenge for walker Yohann Diniz
Yohann Diniz king of the 50 km of the London Worlds, August 13, 2017 AFP
Text by: Farid Achache Follow
6 mins
The French Yohann Diniz, 43, will live his last 50 kilometers walk during the Tokyo Olympics next summer after more than fifteen years of high level.
Vice-world champion in 2007 in Osaka, Diniz marked the history of French walking with a world title in 2017 and a world record.
Publicity
Read more
Rio 2016. Almost unconscious, going after himself, Yohann Diniz had experienced an ordeal in mondovision.
Under the Brazilian heat, the body did not want to respond, it had to deal with intestinal problems.
Finishing in 8th place, he was evacuated to the hospital.
Athletic walking remains a terrible sport, the images had upset those around him.
“
I was in front of the TV, I had to tell the children to stop watching.
I called everyone, no one answered.
I told myself that he was dead, that no one dared tell me,
”his wife told the daily
Liberation
.
Battered childhood
Free spirit,
Yohann Diniz
has always fought against himself.
Blame it on a battered childhood, with parents who were too young, only 16 years old, who separated very quickly.
Suffering, he takes refuge with his grandparents.
Adolescence is difficult, this time he takes refuge in drugs, nonsense.
In order not to perform his military service, the former militant in the Revolutionary Communist League, who campaigned a lot against the National Front, performs his civilian service at the Reims athletics club and takes care of young people in difficult neighborhoods.
He tries his hand at walking, gets results very quickly.
The story is known to all, this father has never hidden anything.
The first of his European championship titles in 2006 opened the doors to a contract with the Post Office, as a detached high-level athlete.
"
I can say today that athletics saved me and allowed me to get back on track,
" said the athlete to the
Parisian
.
2017, the year of the world coronation
The
world record
holder for
the 50 km walk in 3 hours 32 minutes had regained height with a world champion title a year after Rio, where he imposed
a frenzied pace on the competition
in
London in 2017
, thus signing the second best performance of all time (3h 33 min and 11 sec) without however succeeding in erasing his world record achieved in 2014. He had become for the occasion the oldest world champion in the history of athletics, at 39 years and 224 days.
With more than eight minutes ahead of Hirooki Airai, Yohann Diniz had created the void behind him with the biggest gap in the 50 km walk at the Worlds.
From now on, at 43 years old, it is towards Japan that the French walking ambassador looks for a last dance in Sapporo which sounds like a farewell to his discipline.
The three-time European champion will participate in the last 50 km of the Games.
Last December, the International Olympic Committee canceled this event from Paris 2024, which has been on the Olympic program since 1932. It will be replaced a priori by a mixed march yet to be determined.
French walker Yohann Diniz (c) supported by two officials after the 50 km at the Rio Olympics, August 19, 2016. AFP / Archives
Rediscover the excitement of London 2012
Happy sneakers on the feet as he told
Liberation
, “
you find yourself in the undergrowth, there is no one there.
I have the smells, my breath, my footsteps on the asphalt, the wind in the leaves, the birds… It allows me to escape, to find myself alone in the face of the elements
”, Yohann Diniz hopes to live in Tokyo what he does. had felt in London at the 2012 Olympics, "
the biggest emotion
" of his career.
“
I would like to succeed at least once in my Olympic Games from A to Z. Even though Rio was not a failure, I got to the end of myself.
I just lacked the little metal that went with the race,
”he explains to France Television.
"
I will not be racing before the Games,
" Diniz has just declared in the columns of
L'Équipe.
“
It's true that I haven't finished 50 km since the 2019 European Cup, where I achieved the minimums, and that before that, the last one dated from my 2017 world title. don't scare me.
I don't need benchmarks, I've even always been better without benchmarks.
I have enough experience to get straight to the start line in Sapporo.
This distance, I know it by heart.
Certainties have never been too successful for me.
I prefer to have the ball in my stomach on the line, than to arrive with the gouache, telling myself that I'm going to tear everything up, and that nothing is happening behind,
”adds the man still in motion.
Diniz had retired during the Worlds in Doha in Qatar in 2019.
Tokyo 2020, for Yohann Diniz, will sound like the end of a story, his last race and the last 50 km at the Olympics that he hopes to live at full speed.
"
Lots of things mean that motivation will be increased tenfold
."
Diniz clings to the Games like a bird to his branch.
A medal would crown this busy career.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
2020 Olympics
Athletics
France