Paris 2024 – Short stories from the Games: Alain Mimoun, the revenger who trained in secret to compete in, and win, the first marathon of his life

A few months before the start of the Olympic Games, Franceinfo: sport takes you into the little stories that make up the great history of the Games. Like that of Alain Mimoun, tired of being beaten by Emil Zatopek, and who decided to win gold in the marathon in 1956 in Melbourne. Without telling anyone.

He could have been satisfied with his eternal second places. We would have loved it just as much. Like a Raymond Poulidor of athletics. But Alain Mimoun, as mischievous in life as he is proud on the track, refused this fate. The magnificent loser, that wasn’t enough for him. So he found a way to permanently escape the shadow of his usual tormentor, Emil Zatopek. By thinking big, very big. Constantly beaten by the Czechoslovak legend in the middle distance, he decided to surprise him on another terrain: the 42.195 km of the marathon. Problem: before the 1956 Olympic Games, Alain Mimoun had never run this distance.

Under the handkerchief, a champion’s pride

Of course, this image remains for posterity. That of Alain Mimoun braving the Australian heat with a handkerchief on his head to protect him during this marathon, contested on September 1, 1956, under a blazing sun (36° in the shade). A “system D” which seems so outdated today but which has proven to be sufficiently effective in preventing sunstroke. And a magnificent lucky charm for history. But what is less known is that this handkerchief housed a skull which had planned everything in this marathon. Including the element of surprise when he showed up at the start.

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Alain Mimoun has not informed anyone of his intention to take part in this race. But he has been mulling over this secret project for two years. Without telling anyone, the native of Maïder, Algeria, trains for the distance whenever he can. He knows he has the legs to do it. 32 times French champion over 5,000m, 10,000m or cross-country, he swallows the milestones in the shadows. Even his wife doesn’t know.

In Mimoun’s head, an obsession: to beat his rival Emil Zatopek. “The Czech Locomotive”, absolute star of the discipline, has already deprived him of gold at the 1948 Olympic Games in London and at those in Helsinki in 1952. However, in this motivation of the Frenchman, there is no trace of animosity. He and Zatopek are competitors but above all friends. “He was not an adversary, but a brother. With Emil, as soon as the finish line was crossed, we kissed like two lovers”, remembered the Tricolore in an interview with the Journal de la Haute-Marne.

However, it is indeed as favorite that Zatopek once again presents itself at the start of the marathon. What does he have to fear from his aging friend, 35, who finished a modest 12th place in the Olympic 10,000 meters a few days earlier? Alain Mimoun continues in the JHM: “When I announced that I was going to do the marathon, what a laugh! Everyone said I was too old. The French, the foreigners, everyone laughed except Zatopek, this holy man.“ What they don’t know is that Mimoun has been training again and again in recent hours. On the airport tarmac. In the hotel corridors. He even covered 35 kilometers in secret as soon as he finished his 10,000 meters!

Several factors will then intervene to make this marathon part of the history of French sport. Alain Mimoun already received a telegram the day before the race: he is the father of a little girl. He names her Olympe… Then, there is this carefreeness that characterizes him. He is the only one, on the starting line, to be smiling and relaxed, in the middle of the 44 other competitors who wear the mask. And for good reason, he doesn’t know what awaits him. Having never done a marathon in his life, he does not know the suffering.

It is this unawareness of danger and this lightness that will quickly bring him to the forefront of the race. Crushed by the heat, slowed by the tar melting under the soles, Zatopek stalled. In front, his lifelong friend controls the tempo and, taking advantage of the launching pad offered by the American John Kelly, who blows him “come on Alain”, Mimoun leaves alone halfway through the race. Like a big.

The salvation of the vanquished

He hits the “30 wall” head-on (a feeling of sudden drop in energy that affects marathon runners at the 30th kilometer of the race): “Even the handkerchief I had on my head to protect me from the sun seemed to weigh tons. I was walking in the fog”he confided to the Belgian daily “La Derniere Heure”, but the Frenchman remembers his daughter who has just been born, his wife, his mother, “the tricolor flag he wants to brandish” and all those hours spent training in secret. And the stride lengthens by a miracle. The last five kilometers are swallowed in a state of weightlessness. The eternal second flies on the road, and soon on the tarmac of the Olympic stadium where 110,000 people greet his arrival, alone, in the enclosure. For one last lap. Unforgettable, even more than ten years after the death of this icon of French sport, who died in 2013 at the age of 92.

“I no longer touched the ground. I even completed the fastest 400 meters of my entire career. Olympic champion for my first marathon, I had to do it!”, he was still jubilant, his eyes eternally laughing. However, on September 1, 1956, no sign of joy showed on the runner’s emaciated features after his victory. He is looking, he is waiting for Emil Zatopek. When he finally arrives, at the end of his strength, in 6th place, he does not know that his friend has won. When he finds out, he takes off his cap and gives him a military salute. Then the two men fall into each other’s arms. And the smile finally appears on Alain Mimoun’s face.