Gaston Mercier

Gaston Antoine Mercier (born June 5, 1932 in Paris , † July 4, 1974 in Bussières ) was a French rower . He won an Olympic gold medal in 1952 .

Athletic career

Raymond Salles and Gaston Mercier rowed for the Société d'Encouragement du Sport Nautique . Since they did not have a suitable helmsman, they tried the son of a rower from the Société Nautique de la Marne . Bernard Malivoire was only 14 years old in 1952 but matched Salles and Mercier. This team competed at the Olympic Games in Helsinki in two with a helmsman .

The French won in Helsinki in the second run and in the first semifinals and, like the Italian European champions from 1949 to 1951, Giuseppe Ramani , Aldo Tarlao and helmsman Luciano Marion, had reached the final without defeat. The Germans Helmut Heinhold , Heinz Manchen and Helmut Noll , the Finns and the Danes reached the finals from the hope runs . In the final, the French won three and a half seconds ahead of the Germans. The Danes received the bronze medal ahead of the Italians and the Finns.

Four years later, Mercier took part in the foursome without a helmsman at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne . Together with René Guissart , Yves Delacour and Guy Guillabert, he lost to the boat from the USA in the preliminary run and qualified for the semifinals via the hope run. In the semifinals, the first two boats from both races qualified for the final, Canadians and French prevailed in the first semifinals, and Americans and Italians in the second semifinals. In the final, the Canadians won with almost ten seconds ahead of the US boat, two and a half seconds behind the French won the bronze medal ahead of the Italian European champions of 1956.

At his third participation in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome , Mercier sat in the French eighth , who was defeated in the run-up to the eventual Olympic champion from Germany and was able to qualify for the final via the repechage. Behind Germany and Canada, the Czechs won the bronze medal by less than two seconds over the French; behind the French, the Americans came in fifth, having won eighth place in all Olympic Games since 1920.

Mercier won his last international medal with the French eighth at the European Championships in 1961 with third place behind Italians and Germans.

literature

• Volker Kluge : Summer Olympic Games. The Chronicle II. London 1948 - Tokyo 1964. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-328-00740-7 .

Web links

• Gaston Mercier in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Footnotes

1. ↑ Volker Kluge: Olympic Summer Games. Die Chronik II. London 1948 - Tokyo 1964. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-328-00740-7 , p. 320 note 397.
2. ↑ European Championships in the eighth