14

As a kid growing up in the Algerian town of Telagh, Alain Mimoun fell in love with France. He was to become the most bemedaled French athlete in history. In 1939, barely eighteen years old, he joined the army, in order to get to know the “mother country”: “the most beautiful girl in the world,” as he saw it. And the war that then broke out resulted in his being awarded the military Croix de Guerre medal as an exceptional case. He was demobilized in 1946 and, two years later, won an Olympic 10,000-metres medal. Competing using “the means on hand” during the 1950s, he won national, European, and world titles, even putting in a tremendous effort to win the Olympic marathon in Melbourne in 1956. It was as if war had just been a long and painful physical and mental preparation process that had to be endured, to the bitter end, for France!