FRENCH’S GRESIER HOPE FOR FIRST WORLD CROSS COUNTRY MEDAL
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2026 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission.
TALLAHASSEE (09-Jan) — At the SPAR European Athletics Championships in Lagoa, Portugal last month, France’s Jimmy Grecier lost his battle with Spain’s Thierry Ndikumwenayo in the final meters of the 7.47km senior men’s race when he slipped and lost his line before the finish. The reigning 10,000m world champion made no excuses.
“When I tried to give the last attack, I lost my balance in the mud pot and it turned out that Thierry was stronger than me today,” said Gressier after the race. “Bravo to him!”
While the silver medal was satisfying (it was her fifth individual medal at the European Cross Country Championships, including three gold medals in the under-23 race), it left her wanting more. Unlike many Europeans, he decided to resume the track and field world championships tomorrow here at Appalachian Regional Park, a former landfill turned into a purpose-built cross-country course that has hosted 75 championships at various levels, according to local officials.
“It’s true, I fell in the last few meters of the European Championship,” Grecier said through an interpreter at a press conference here today. “It was really disappointing, but it motivated me to train harder. I have a clear goal here: to come home with a medal. I use that as motivation to get that medal.”
Grecier, 28, is having a great year in 2025. His victory in the 10,000m at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo was a shocker. Gresier was in sixth position, coming off the backstretch on the final lap. He moved up to fourth coming out of the final bend and in the most memorable 90 meters of those championships he beat Ethiopia’s Yomif Keyelcha and Selemon Barega and Sweden’s Andreas Almgren to win the gold medal by 6/100ths of a second. He ran his last 1000 meters in 2:26.10.
“It was a really crazy final,” Grecier told reporters today. “I was at a high level in the World Championship and I was in great form in the lead. I think the last few meters of that race speak for themselves.”
Seven days later, Gresier won a bronze medal in the 5000m race. Adding to his European half-marathon title last April (with a personal best of 59:45) and 5000m of 12:51.59, Grecier has established himself as Europe’s best man over 10,000m (although Almgren is close behind). He said that to reach this level, he had to raise his game in training.
“I changed the intensity of my training,” he said in response to the journalists’ question about what successes he had last year. “I trained a lot harder. Last year I only missed five days without running all year. I also focused on the last 400 meters and the last straight.”
Grecier, who said he watches a lot of football (soccer), became known for his finish line celebrations. At the European Half Marathon Championships, he braked the finish line, and at the previous European Cross Country Championships, he performed dramatic skids on his knees across the finish line, as footballers do after scoring a goal. When asked if he had a special celebration in mind for Tallahassee, he laughed.
“To plan my celebrations, I have to win first,” he said. “There are some big clients to win over tomorrow, so I’ll think about that a bit later.”
The last Frenchman to win the World Championships in Athletics was Jean Fayol in 1965 (Annette Serjeant won the women’s event in 1989). The last European to win the senior individual title was Belgium’s Mohamed Moorhit in 2001 (he was suspended for doping the following year). A medal of any color for Gressier would be a major achievement here and certainly front page news in France.
“Cross country teaches many things, including resilience, the importance of hard work and competitive spirit,” Grecier told reporters. “It taught me at a young age that I have to work hard and never give up. Tokyo was the culmination of all that hard work and all my childhood dreams.”
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