French middle-distance runner Michel Jazy (© AFP / Getty Images)
Midway through the feature race on the churned-up Stade de Courtemanche track 60 years ago, the star attraction of the Wednesday evening meeting in Rennes was two and a half seconds down on world record schedule.
Michel Jazy, formerly employed as a typographer with L’Equipe, had come to the Breton capital on 9 June 1965 with the intention of making the morning headlines in the daily sports newspaper he always called his ‘bible’.
Eight months on from the crushing disappointment of the Olympic 5000m final in Tokyo, the rejuvenated French athlete was on a mission: to break the 3:54.1 world mile record held by New Zealand’s middle distance colossus Peter Snell.
In the Olympic arena in Japan the previous October, Jazy had forged a lead of 10 metres with 200 metres remaining and was savouring the prospect of victory. “I was beside myself with joy,” he confided later.
Within the course of three strides, that joy turned to despair. His legs suddenly felt like they were made of lead and “weighed a ton each”.
Bob Schul, an officer in the US Air Force, swept past him 50 metres from the finish line. Jazy was so deflated he faded out of the medals, finishing fourth.
Deeply moved
It had been different in Rome in 1960. Back then, Jazy had been overjoyed to finish 2.8 seconds behind Herb Elliott’s stunning 3:35.6 world 1500m record run. At 24, the French athlete had an Olympic silver medal, a huge PB and a new national record.
Besides, the jubilant Jazy insisted at the time, he was the first man across the line. “Elliott was a being from another planet,” he reasoned.
Michel Jazy, Herb Elliott and Istvan Rozsavolgyi in Rome in 1960 (© AFP / Getty Images)
In the wake of his Tokyo torment, the distraught Jazy decided to hang up his racing spikes. He changed his mind after receiving 12,000 letters from young fans, urging him to carry on.
“I was deeply moved,” he said. “Those letters meant more to me than the gold medal I didn’t win in Tokyo.”
Resuming training with a renewed sense of purpose, Jazy re-emerged with a vengeance in 1965, setting a European mile record of 3:55.4 on 2 June at Saint-Maur, and then a new continental mark for 5000m with 13:34.4 in Lorient on 6 June.
On the cool evening of 9 June, Jazy maintained his composure in Rennes when Jean Wadoux, ninth in the 1500m final in Tokyo, towed him to halfway in 1:56.5 – 2.5 seconds down on Snell’s world record split.
Claude Nicolas, another compatriot, then assumed the pacemaking duties and Jazy reached the bell in 2:57.4 – by then 3.4 seconds behind schedule.
Left out in front on his own, he needed a final lap of 56.6. “Vas-y Ja-zy!” screamed the crowd rhythmically: “Go Jazy!”
Their hero duly went for it.
“His calm, almost bored expression changed into one of pain,” wrote Bud Shrake, a distinguished US novelist and screenwriter, in an eloquent report for Sports Illustrated.
“His lips tightened. Running like a sprinter, flying away from the field, driving towards the finish, Jazy went for the record.
“He crashed through the tape and, slowing, looked away disgustedly. He was convinced he had failed.”
Pointing in anger towards the badly torn up track, Jazy railed against the scheduling of his race at the very end of an evening of regional races.
But then the public address speaker began to crackle. The stadium announcer proclaimed: “three minutes 53.6 – a new world record.”
Jazy had his place on the front page of L’Equipe – and in the annals of French track and field, alongside his compatriot and confidant Jules Ladoumegue, the first man to break 4:10 for the mile with his 4:09.2 clocking in Paris in 1931.
“The mile has been my ambition,” declared the joyous Jazy. “All the really great names are there: Bannister, Landy, Elliott, Snell. These men are idols to me.
“Now the ambition is realised. I’ve done what I set out to do.”
Four world records and six European records
Not that Jazy was finished in what was for him personally, and for the distance running world, an annus mirabilis.
From 1000m up to the one hour run, 23 global marks were set in 1965, with the Australian Ron Clarke, the Kenyan Kip Keino and the razor-sharp Jazy the three musketeers doing most of the damage to the world record books.
Between 2 June and 30 June, Jazy broke four world records and six European records.
At Melun on 23 June, he bettered his own mark for 3000m with 7:49.0, en route to a two mile world record of 8:22.6, beating Clarke by 2.2 seconds.
Michel Jazy leads from Ron Clarke in Melun in June 1965 (© AFP / Getty Images)
Two days after that, at Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, Jazy teamed up with fellow French athlete Wadoux, Nicolas and Gerard Vervoort to set a 4x1500m relay world record of 14:49.0.
There was no global mark in Helsinki on 30 June, but Jazy emerged victorious from what was billed as “the 5000m race of the century,” beating Clarke, Keino, Olympic 10,000m champion Billy Mills and Schul in 13:27.6, a European record.
Jazy set five other global marks in his career: 25:01.6 for 2000m and 7:49.2 for 3000m in 1962; 8:29.6 for 2 miles in 1963; 4:56.2 for 2000m in 1966; and 15:04.2 as part of a French 4x1500m relay quartet at Versailles in 1961.
The future national sporting hero endured a tough upbringing in a Polish immigrant coal mining family at Oignies in northern France.
Born in the same street as Guy Drut, who became Olympic 110m hurdles champion in Montreal in 1976, the youthful Jazy was known as “the zebra of the mining villages”. He bore striped scars on his back from regular beatings administered by his teacher at school.
Jazy was 12 when his father died of silicosis. He lived with his grandparents before moving to Paris to join his mother, who worked as a waitress in Monmartre.
Twice a European champion at 1500m, Jazy settled in the south of France in later life. He died in Dax in February 2024, aged 87.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
