Coach Flo hasn’t forgotten | “Quebec changed my life”

(Saint-Denis) “I never cry, but yesterday, it came out…”

Édrick Floréal had to contain himself a little longer when recounting the moment when Julien Alfred crossed the track to fall into his arms after his surprise gold medal in the 100 meters at the Paris Olympic Games, in the rain, on Saturday evening.

“I’m proud of you, I knew we could do it,” the coach told him, continuing his work from the stands for the triple jump final, where another of his athletes finished fifth.

“You always believed in me, you always loved me, thank you,” replied the Saint-Lucian, who would later say she was embarrassed by these outpourings to which she was not accustomed.

White cap of the Texas Longhorns, green uniform of Ireland, mask on his face, Édrick Floréal made a detour to meet us, the photographer Olivier Jean and me, among the crowd leaving the Stade de France after the athletics session, Sunday afternoon.

Alfred’s triumph wasn’t the only joy for the Montreal native Saturday night; Leo Neugebauer, his 6-foot-7 German protégé, won silver in the decathlon. “Yeah, it’s a great day. And now my three girls just got in the 200.”

Born in Gonaïves, Haiti, Édrick Floréal immigrated to Montreal at the age of 6. With his little brother, he joined his father who arrived a year earlier, after his mother died when the youngest was born.

A basketball player, he was noticed by coach Daniel St-Hilaire. “I was dunking the ball, and he convinced me to go do the high jump.”

It was finally the long jump and especially the triple jump, a discipline for which he has held the Canadian record since 1989. His cousin Bruny Surin also played basketball and wanted nothing to do with athletics. “When I had success, he got interested.”

After high school, Floréal moved to the United States to continue his development. A graduate of the University of Arkansas, he won five NCAA titles in triple jump under the tutelage of Mike Conley Sr., the 1992 Olympic champion.

With his cousin Bruny, he took part in the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988 (triple jump) and in Barcelona in 1992 (long jump), where he met his wife, the American LaVonna Martin, winner of silver in the 100 m hurdles.

The 1990 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist has taken to coaching somewhat by chance. From the mid-1990s, he enjoyed success at Stanford, California, and Kentucky, with whom he became a reference on the American university circuit and elsewhere in the world.

The Alfred case

The great athletes he has recruited and developed number in the dozens: Omar MacLeod, the 2016 Olympic 110m hurdles champion; Kandra Harrison, the 100m hurdles world record holder from 2016 to 2022; and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the Olympic gold medalist he coached for two years before she broke the 400m hurdles world record five times.

Julien Alfred is a special case. Originally from Saint Lucia, a small Caribbean island of 180,000 inhabitants, she grew up in a very poor family. Her father, who had put her into athletics, died of cancer when she was 13. For a year or two, she didn’t want to go back on the track.

“Even today, 10 years later, she associates athletics with her father. It still hurts.”

Training conditions in Saint Lucia were less than optimal. “The track is cement,” says Edrick Floréal, pointing to the concrete surface of the Stade de France.

So she moved to Jamaica to finish high school and compete against the world’s best sprinters. But athletically, the trip was “a disaster,” the coach says.

Julien Alfred wrote to her asking to take her under his wing. “I look at the times: 11.54 s and 24.00 s. Hmm, not sure! And then she sends me videos. Then I was 100% sure! Oh my God, I can do special things with her. I saw the talent and I saw the mistakes. If I could correct 10 mistakes, 11.5 s would become 10.7 s. That was the plan for her.”

Alfred didn’t want to join him in Kentucky, considering the climate too cold. Their relationship began when he was named head coach at the University of Texas at Austin. “My job was to give her back the joy of running to honor her father. Over time, I became her adoptive father. My wife takes care of her and I am a stability for her. In interviews, she doesn’t say I’m her coachshe says I am her father.”

A star on the track

On the track, Edrick Floréal had to persevere to convince her to improve each segment of her races. “The problem is that athletes have no patience. Her start was not very good. She made false starts. At the World Championships in Oregon in 2022, she was disqualified in the semi-finals. In Budapest, last summer, she received a yellow card [avant de finir 5^e]. She had a lot of doubts. This year, we worked a lot on her patience and her confidence. Now, she can attack. She is no longer afraid of making a false start.

Crowned world indoor 60m champion in the spring, the 23-year-old was ready to implement her coach’s strategy in Paris. In the semi-final, he asked her to come out of the blocks like a bomb to surprise American Sha’Carri Richardson, then preventing the favourite from closing in on her.

“The competition ended in the semi-finals. The plan was to cause a big shock. The Americans were very comfortable. I wanted to make them doubt a little. Their face changed. I knew we had taken a small advantage.”

In the final, the strategy was to “attack them early and force them to push mid-race.” “When Sha’Carri made her big move, it was too late. It discouraged her. Like at the Prefontaine Classic, I wanted her to give up. And she gave up a little. Julien executed the plan perfectly.”

With the university and international seasons coming one after the other, Édrick Floréal rarely has the opportunity to return to Montreal, where his brother still lives. Which doesn’t stop him from considering Quebec as “home”.

“I don’t go there often enough, but Quebec has changed my life. It’s the foundation of my life. My relationship with Bruny, my family, what I learned, my education. Who I am today is really because Quebec gave me the chance to leave Haiti and discover a whole different life. I am a coach successful, but if I hadn’t had that chance, I would never have become the person I am.”

“Coach Flo” looked at his watch and headed back to the warm-up track. Irishwoman Rhasidat Adeleke, another of his athletes who is ranked third in the world, begins her attempt to reach a first Olympic podium in the 400m on Monday. Julien Alfred, for her part, will want to win another medal in the 200m, with the hope of helping his country’s youth “get out of the ghetto”.