Jimmy Gressier at the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 (© Getty Images)
A football match never really ends after 90 minutes; there’s always added time. At Manchester United, they called it ‘Fergie Time’, in honour of the many last-minute goals scored in those decisive moments under the leadership of legendary manager Alex Ferguson.
In France, they may now speak of 'Jimmy Time'.
At the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25, Jimmy Gressier seized his chance in the 10,000m. The Frenchman unleashed a breath-taking finishing sprint to claim his first world title. “If we ran the same race tomorrow, I could just as well finish sixth or seventh,” he said.
The French runner has earned the greatest title of his career, even though he would have preferred to be a football world champion. But he won’t complain, he joked with journalists in the mixed zone. He now joins the select circle of French world champions: “I’m joining Zizou (Zinedine Zidane), for example, who won the World Cup,” he added with a smile.
He also becomes only the ninth French athlete in history to win gold at the World Championships, following in the footsteps of icons such as Marie-José Perec (1991 and 1995 over 400m) and Kevin Mayer (decathlon in 2017 and 2022).
“I realise it without fully realising it,” Gressier said of his achievement. “For me, emotions are sometimes hard to express. Honestly, I cry more watching ‘The Voice’ and hearing kids sing than when I become world champion, because in the moment I’m still in action.”
Football as redemption
Gressier, who was carrying a tendon injury during the Paris Olympic Games, arrived in Tokyo with fire in his belly, physically and mentally ready, despite some lingering pain in his heel. His experience and maturity, he says, carried him through to the title – along with the words of another French distance runner who won world and European medals, Bouabdellah Tahri.
“I really like Bob Tari’s phrase, the rule of the three Ts: talent, travail, temps (talent, work, time in English).”
Jimmy Gressier winning the European U23 cross country title (© Getty Images)
Earlier in his career, Gressier won three U23 titles at the European Cross Country Championships, but in recent years he had been criticised for his inconsistency on the track. He made something of a breakthrough this year, though.
During the indoor season, he set a European indoor 5000m record of 12:54.92 and an outright French 3000m record of 7:30.18. He then set a European 5km record of 12:57 on the roads and won the European half marathon title in Leuven in a PB of 59:45.
Outdoors on the track, he set a French 5000m record of 12:51.59 in Paris and went on to win the Diamond League 3000m title in Zurich – a well-timed confidence boost in what was his final race before heading to the World Championships in Tokyo, where he went on to win the 10,000m before earning bronze in the 5000m.
His 10,000m triumph was a victory with a touch of redemption, with football playing its part. Gressier – who was born in the same neighbourhood as Franck Ribery, the former Bayern Munich and French international player – proudly acknowledges his footballing roots.
“Football helped me become a world champion,” he says. “You can see it in the last stretch, in the final 60 meters. It’s no coincidence: it’s the same repeated effort I learned in football. When a ball was played deep, I would accelerate sharply to score.”
And that’s exactly what he reproduced on the track in the Japanese capital.
Jimmy Gressier wins the 10,000m at the World Championships Tokyo 25 (© Getty Images)
At Tokyo’s National Stadium, the 56,000 spectators had their eyes mainly on the 100m final, but it was Gressier who delivered one of the evening’s biggest surprises. The Frenchman became only the third European winner of the men’s 10,000m at the World Championships after Italy’s Alberto Cova (1983) and Britain’s Mo Farah (2013, 2015 and 2017).
He was joined on the 10,000m podium by Sweden’s bronze medallist Andreas Almgren, marking the first time since 1987 that two European men had made it on to the podium. That feat was matched in the 5000m as Gressier was joined on the podium by Belgium’s Isaac Kimeli, who claimed silver.
“Back when Farah won his world titles, my coach told me in training that I could keep up with the best in the world,” recalls Gressier. “Now it’s the Europeans who are making a mark.”
“I still have a lot of dreams where I’m playing football again,” he smiled. From now on, though, those dreams should shine in gold.
Pierre Pillet for World Athletics
Produced as part of the World Athletics Media Academy project
