On Thursday, the French athletics association informed AFP that Michel Jazy, the former middle-distance world record holder, had passed away at 87.
Jazy set nine middle-distance world records in his career. He was also a two-time European champion and an Olympic silver medalist in the 1,500 meters.
Jazy, born in 1936 in a family of Polish miners in northern France, became a French national at eighteen and competed in his first Olympic Games two years later.
He finished second in the 1,500 meters in 1960 and fourth in the 5,000 meters in 1964, but he did not win the Olympic title when there were no world athletics championships.
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"I'm devastated," FFA president Andre Giraud told AFP. "For the world of athletics and the FFA, it's a huge loss given everything he represented, especially in this year of the Olympic Games in Paris."
He was one of the biggest stars of French sport at the time, alongside cyclist Jacques Anquetil.
"Jazy left his mark on our sport with his results and his world records, he loomed large in French sport," Pierre Weiss, former director of the FFA and a close friend of the Jazy family, told AFP.
"With (figure skater) Alain Calmat, he pulled crowds into the bistros where there were TV screens, that was something."
