Nicole Duclos

Nicole Duclos (born August 15, 1947 as Nicole Salavert) is a former French athlete who was successful as a 400 meter runner around 1970 . She started for the CA Brive and was trained by Maurice Chaumeil.

She is 1.67 m tall and had a competition weight of 55 kg.

Life

Between 1966 and 1974 Nicole Duclos was called up to the French national team 23 times.

She began her athletic career as an 800-meter runner . Over this distance she became French junior champion in 1964 and ran a junior record a year later.

She was twice (1969 and 1972) French champion over 400 meters. In 1969 she was voted France's sportswoman of the year (“ Champion des champions ”) by the sports newspaper L'Équipe .

She took part in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and made it to the semi-finals .

World records

Her most successful year was 1969, when she was allowed to enter the world record lists three times.

• At the European Championships in Athens in 1969 , she won the gold medal over 400 meters in the world record time of 51.72 s, just ahead of her compatriot Colette Besson , who was two hundredths of a second slower. Since hand-stopped records were still recognized at that time, she and Colette Besson were joint world record holders with 51.7 seconds.
• On July 6, 1969 she ran in Paris as a member of the French 4 x 400 meter relay world record in 3: 34.2 min.
• At the European Championships in Athens, this world record was initially lost to the German quartet, which improved it to 3: 33.9 minutes in advance on September 19th. However, it was recovered the very next day. Although the French relay with Nicole Duclos as second runner in 3: 30.85 minutes was beaten by the British by three hundredths of a second, both times were noted as world records with hand-stopped 3: 30.8 minutes.

Web links

• Nicole Duclos in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )