Charles Coste at his home in Bois-Colombes, France, on January 30, 2024. JOEL SAGET/AFP
Charles Coste said he experienced "one of the most beautiful moments of his long life" when, on July 26, 2024, in the Jardin des Tuileries, he passed the Olympic torch to Teddy Riner and Marie-José Pérec and watched the Olympic flame rise into the rainy Paris sky. "I never thought I would receive such an honor," remarked the centenarian, after Tony Estanguet, the head of the organizing committee, had quietly called him a month before the ceremony to inform him he would be one of the last torchbearers.
Subscribers only
Foreign press reacts to 'unique' 2024 Olympics opening ceremony: 'Paris amazes the world under the deluge'
Perhaps Coste thought back 76 years, to when he and his teammates from the France team pursuit squad became Olympic champions in London, in 1948, on the tarmac track of the Herne Hill velodrome. That year, in the British capital, the scars of wartime bombings were still visible, and the Olympics were nothing like the media spectacle they are today. Coste and his three teammates from the "ABCD" team – along with Pierre Adam, Serge Blusson and Fernand Decanali – had to squeeze together on a podium too small as they waited to listen to the French national anthem, which was ultimately not played. The English, annoyed at having lost in the semifinals, had "misplaced" the record, he liked to joke.
