Stéphane Caristan

Stéphane Caristan (born May 31, 1964 in Créteil ) is a former French athlete . With a height of 1.87 m, his competition weight was 77 kg.

Caristan's father was from the island of Martinique. His brother Alain was a pole vaulter, his sister Chantal a hurdler. Stéphane was the most successful in the family.

In 1984 he took part in the Olympic Games in Los Angeles and finished 6th in the 110 meter hurdles in 13.71 seconds . At the World Indoor Games in Paris-Bercy in 1985, he won the 60-meter hurdles in 7.67 seconds with two hundredths of a second ahead of the Spaniard Javier Moracho .

In 1986 Stéphane Caristan ran the two best races of his career. He won the semi-finals at the European Championships in Stuttgart in a European record time of 13.28 seconds. In the final, he then increased to 13.20 seconds and won 0.22 seconds ahead of Arto Bryggare . At the World Indoor Championships in 1987 he won silver in 7.62 seconds, but was 0.11 seconds behind Tony Campbell (USA).

Shortly afterwards, Caristan had to have an operation on his right knee and never again achieved the consistency of 1986. Surprisingly, he made his debut in the 400-meter hurdles in 1991 . In 1992 he even reached the Olympic finals in Barcelona and finished seventh with a personal best of 48.86 seconds.

Caristan was the French champion in the 110 meter hurdles from 1983 to 1986 and in the 400 meter hurdles in 1992.

literature

• Peter Matthews (ed): Athletics 1992 . Windsor 1992, ISBN 1-873057-11-3 .
• Ekkehard zur Megede: The Modern Olympic Century 1896-1996 Track and Field Athletics . Berlin 1999 (published by the German Society for Athletics Documentation eV).