Guest of RMC this Wednesday, a few hours after officially announcing the end of his athletic career, Pierre-Ambroise Bosse – 2017 world champion in the 800m and French record holder for the distance – shared his first impressions and his regrets, this the latter being forced to stop due to a major tendon injury that he has been carrying around for several years.
“I’ve had better days, I’m going to have to bounce back from this.” Invited this Wednesday, December 27 on RMC, after announcing, on Tuesday, the end of his career less than seven months before the Paris Games, Pierre-Ambroise Bosse spoke about his state of mind, not without lucidity.
The 31-year-old French athlete, crowned 800m world champion in 2017, is forced to hang up his spikes due to serious and repeated injuries to his right ischio tendon. “It’s a shock, it hurts but there you have it, a new life presents itself, it’s official now. The high-level athlete is dead.”
“It took me a while to admit it was over.”
“Today it’s easier to talk about it, there is less hypocrisy with those close to me,” he explains. “It’s been ruminating for six months, on May 10, the day before my birthday, the radiologist gave me the news and I didn’t expect it at all. I had a little something training a few days before, my leg had locked up. I went for the MRI to reassure myself and, well…”
“There are a lot of footballers at the moment who have this kind of injury, like N’Golo Kanté. But for us it’s another matter, we have to maintain a speed of more than 30 km/h to maintain over several hundred meters and repeating it every day in training, that’s the problem. There I learned that I have exactly the same thing as before being operated on. The radiologist told me that I would not run probably never again as quickly as before, that I had to make up my mind (…) It took me a while to admit it. There was always a little voice telling me: ‘don’t stop not’, but I can see that it’s floundering, as soon as I accelerate I feel the pain that comes.”
The prospect of the Games at home delayed his decision for some time. “When your mother looks you in the eyes and says: ‘it’s my dream that you go to the Games!’, she had already almost taken the places… it’s terrible. I felt unwell, and that’s hard to admit at 31.”