Eunice Barber

Eunice Barber
Barber at the 2007 World Championships
nation	Sierra Leone France
birthday	17th November 1974
place of birth	Freetown
size	175 cm
Weight	68 kg
Career
discipline	Heptathlon , long jump
Best performance	6889 points (heptathlon) 7.05 m (long jump)
society	EFS Reims
status	resigned
Medal table
World championships 2 × 2 × 1 × Africa Games 1 × 0 × 0 ×
World championships gold Seville 1999 Heptathlon gold Paris 2003 Long jump silver Paris 2003 Heptathlon silver Helsinki 2005 Heptathlon bronze Helsinki 2005 Long jump  Africa Games gold Harare 1995 Long jump

Eunice Barber (born November 17, 1974 in Freetown ) is a former French athlete of Sierra Leonean origin.

She first came to France in 1990 with the support of a French development aid program . When civil war broke out in her homeland , she decided to come to France forever and was naturalized in 1999. For Sierra Leone she started at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg and finished fourth in the heptathlon . At the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta , she finished fifth in the heptathlon for Sierra Leone and was the flag bearer of her home country at the opening ceremony . She competed in her first international competition for France at the 1999 World Championships in Seville and immediately became world champion. In the same year she was voted France's Sportswoman of the Year (“ Champion des champions ”) by the sports newspaper L'Équipe .

At the 2003 World Championships in Paris , she had an exciting competition with Carolina Klüft , the young athletics star from Sweden. Starting as the favorite, she won the silver medal behind Klüft. Surprisingly, she won the gold medal in the long jump at these world championships .

Due to injury, she could not compete in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens . In 2005, however, she returned impressively with a personal best at a heptathlon meeting in Arles, France . She scored 6889 points here and was considered the greatest competitor of Olympic champion Carolina Klüft at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki , which she was able to confirm on the first day of the competition. Before the last three competitions on August 7th she was leading by only 2 points and before the final 800 meter run she was 15 points behind Klüft, so that it came to a showdown over 800 meters. Barber approached the run very bravely at high speed and had worked out a lead up to 200 meters from the finish that would have been enough to win the world championship. With a furious final sprint for the Swede and the weakening of her own strength, however, she still lost the run and won the silver medal, 53 points behind. At these world championships she was able to win a bronze medal in the long jump 3 days later.

On March 18, 2006, after a traffic offense in Paris , she was arrested by police forces and injured so badly that she was incapacitated for a week. An amateur video shows her being pushed onto the hood of her car and then to the ground by half a dozen police officers. According to Barber, racist remarks should have been made. Conversely, the police accused Barber of resisting state violence . An independent commission of inquiry came to the conclusion in early 2007 that the police officers' version was unreliable. The allegations against Barber were not substantiated in the following years either; nevertheless, the judiciary refused to initiate an investigation against the police officers involved.

Not only this incident, but also injuries set Barber back in the aftermath. At the European Championships in Gothenburg in 2006 , she had to give up the heptathlon after two disciplines because of a hip injury. In 2007 and 2008, she focused on the long jump, but retired from qualifying at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka . In 2008 she failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics.

literature

• zurgams (editor): Time leaps . 35 years of the Mösle all-around meeting in Götzis. Bucher Verlag, Hohenems 2009, ISBN 978-3-902679-23-9

Web links

• Official website of Eunice Barber (French)
• Eunice Barber in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Eunice Barber in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Photos by Eunice Barber

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Spiegel Online : Rabiate Police Officers: Video shows the abuse of an athlete . March 30, 2006 (with video)
2. ^ Spiegel Online : France: Investigations against top athlete . April 11, 2006
3. ↑ Le Nouvel Observateur : Affaire Barber: la version policière remise en cause ( Memento of the original of April 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . February 24, 2007  
4. ↑ See the dossier du 26 Mars on Eunice Barber's website