Myriam Soumaré (born 29 October 1986) is a retired French

track and field Track and field (or athletics in British English) is a sport that includes Competition#Sports, athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name used in North America is derived from where the sport takes place, a ru ...

sprinter., beijing2008.cn, ret: Aug 30, 2008 She announced her retirement from athletics in February 2016.

Athletics career

2008–2009

Soumaré made her Olympic debut at the

2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and officially branded as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes fro ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

. She competed in only one event – the

4 × 100 meters relay 4 (four) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 3 and preceding 5. It is a square number, the smallest semiprime and composite number, and is considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures. Evolution of the Hi ...

together with

Muriel Hurtis-Houairi Muriel Hurtis-Houairi (born 25 March 1979) is a French track and field athlete. She came to prominence in 2002 when she won the 200 m gold medals at both the European Indoor Championships and the European Athletics Championships. The follow ...

Lina Jacques-Sébastien Lina Jacques-Sébastien (born 10 April 1985 in Créteil, France) is a French Sprint (running), sprint athlete who specializes in the 100 metres and 200 metres. Biography She finished sixth in the 100 metres at the 2004 World Junior Ch ...

and Carima Louami. In their first round heat they did not finish and were eliminated, due to a mistake with the baton exchange. In her debut

World Championships A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game ...

appearance at

2009 2009 was designated as the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first known astronomical studies with a telescope and the publication of Astronomia Nova by Joha ...

, Soumaré took part in only one event – the

100 metres The 100 metres, or 100-meter dash, is a sprint race in track and field competitions. The shortest common outdoor running distance, the dash is one of the most popular and prestigious events in the sport of athletics. It has been contested at ...

. She was eliminated in the quarter-finals of that event.

2010 – three medals at the European Championships

At the 2010 European Championships – her debut appearance in the

European Championships A European Championship is the top level international sports competition between European athletes or sports teams representing their respective countries or professional sports clubs. In the plural, the European Championships also refers t ...

– in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

, Soumaré won the

gold medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have b ...

in the

200 metres The 200 metres, or 200-meter dash, is a sprint running event. On an outdoor 400-metre racetrack, the race begins on the curve and ends on the home straight, so a combination of techniques is needed to successfully run the race. A slight ...

with a time of 22.32 seconds in lane 8, shaving her previous personal best time by 0.69 second in doing so. She also won the

4 × 100 metres relay The 4 × 100 metres relay or sprint relay is an athletics track event run in lanes over one lap of the track with four runners completing 100 metres each. The first runners must begin in the same stagger as for the indiv ...

silver medal A silver medal, in sports and other similar areas involving competition, is a medal made of, or plated with, silver awarded to the second-place finisher, or runner-up, of contests or competitions such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, ...

and the

bronze medal A bronze medal in sports and other similar areas involving competition is a medal made of bronze awarded to the third-place finisher of contests or competitions such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, etc. The outright winner receives ...

with a personal best time of 11.18 seconds, which was an improvement of 0.16 second over her previous personal best time.

2011

At the 2011 World Championships in

Daegu Daegu (; ), formerly spelled Taegu and officially Daegu Metropolitan City (), is a city in southeastern South Korea. It is the third-largest urban agglomeration in South Korea after Seoul and Busan; the fourth-largest List of provincial-level ci ...

, Soumaré participated in three events – the

and

. She was eliminated in the semi-finals of the 100 and 200 metres events. Her 4 × 100 metres relay team finished in fourth place in the final.

2012 – 7th in the 200 m Olympic final

Soumaré represented France in three events at the

2012 Summer Olympics The 2012 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012, were an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the ...

in London: 100 m, 200 m and 4 × 100 m relay. She finished seventh in the 200 m final in a time of 22.63 sec. She achieved the 11th fastest time in the 100 m semi-finals and thus did not qualify for the final. In the first round heats of the

4 × 100 m relay 4 (four) is a number, numeral (linguistics), numeral and numerical digit, digit. It is the natural number following 3 and preceding 5. It is a square number, the smallest semiprime and composite number, and is tetraphobia, considered unlucky i ...

, her team botched its last two baton exchanges and was disqualified for out-of-zone baton exchange. Soumaré was the 200 metres runner-up of the

2012 IAAF Diamond League The 2012 IAAF Diamond League (also known as the 2012 Samsung Diamond League for sponsorship purposes) was the third edition of the Diamond League, an annual series of fourteen one-day track and field meetings. The series began on 11 May in Doha, Q ...

, behind

Charonda Williams Charonda Regina Williams (born March 27, 1987) is an American track and field athlete who competes in the sprint events. She is a 200-meter dash specialist and has a personal record of 22.55 seconds. She represented the United States at the 2009 Wo ...

2013 – European Indoor Championships 60 m silver medal

Soumaré won her first

European Indoor Championships The European Indoor Championships was a men's tennis tournament played in Berlin, Germany. The event was played as part of the ATP Tour in 1990 and 1991. It was played on indoor carpet court A carpet court is a type of tennis court. The Intern ...

medal at the 2013 European Indoor Championships – a silver for the

60 metres 60 metres, or 60-meter dash, is a sprint event in track and field. It is a championship event for indoor championships, normally dominated by the best outdoor 100 metres runners. At indoor events, the 60 metres is run on lanes set out in the mi ...

. She had initially won the bronze. But the initial winner of the 60 m final, Tezdzhan Naimova, was stripped of her gold medal after being found guilty of doping during the competition. Soumaré was thus elevated to receive the silver medal. At the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, Soumaré took part in three events – the

and

. She was eliminated in the semi-finals of the 100 and 200 metres events. Her 4 × 100 metres relay team finished the third fastest among the 19 national teams taking part in the heats, and thus qualified for the final. In the final, the French team – consisting of

Céline Distel-Bonnet Céline Distel-Bonnet (born 25 May 1987) is a French former athlete who competed in the sprinting events. She finished sixth in the 100 metres at the 2014 European Championships. In addition, she won several medals as part of the French 4 × ...

, Ayodelé Ikuesan, Soumaré and Stella Akakpo running in the first, second, third and fourth legs respectively – finished the race in second position (42.73 seconds) behind

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

. The French relay team members were duly presented their silver medals during the medal ceremony. After the medal ceremony, the British team filed a protest against the French team, claiming that the latter had an out-of-zone baton handover between Ikuesan and Soumaré. More than two hours after the race, the French relay team was officially disqualified. The French delegation appealed against their disqualification, but it was in vain. Consequently, the American team was upgraded to the silver medal and the British team received the bronze medal.

Bernard Amsalem Bernard Amsalem (born 1951 in Saida, Algeria) is a French organizer of athletics. He was vice-president of the French Athletics Federation from 1997 to 2001, and is now the president since 2001. Amsalem was vice-president of the French Olympic ...

, the president of the

Fédération française d'athlétisme The French Athletics Federation (, FFA) is the governing body for the sport of athletics in France. History FFA is the heir to the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), founded November 20, 1887. In 1912, a French del ...

, called the French team's disqualification "an outrage". He explained that normally the decision to disqualify a team had to be made before the medal ceremony and teams had to file protests within thirty minutes from the end of the race.

2015

Soumaré took a year off from athletics in 2015.

Retirement

On 24 February 2016, Soumaré announced her retirement from athletics, while leaving open the possibility of making a comeback in the future.

Personal life

Soumaré's parents are of

Mauritania Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a sovereign country in Maghreb, Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to Mauritania–Western Sahara border, the north and northwest, ...

n origin. She has four siblings and is a

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

. She lives with them in the northern Paris suburb of

Villiers-le-Bel Villiers-le-Bel () is a commune in the French department of Val-d'Oise, in the northern suburbs of Paris. It is located from the center of Paris. History A tragedy occurred in the town in the early evening of March 25, 1818, when a cracked ...

. Soumaré works as a

childcare Child care, also known as day care, is the care and supervision of one or more children, typically ranging from three months to 18 years old. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(ren), childcare typica ...

assistant in a childcare centre. She wears a

headscarf A headscarf is a scarf covering most or all of the top of a person's, usually women's, hair and head, leaving the face uncovered. A headscarf is formed of a triangular cloth or a square cloth folded into a triangle, with which the head is cov ...

in her daily life but takes it off when she is on the track. Soumaré gave birth to her first child, a boy, in June 2015.

International competitions

*Note: Only the position in the final is indicated, unless otherwise stated ^†: Disqualified in the final.

Medal record

2007 European Athletics U23 Championships The 6th European Athletics U23 Championships were held between 12 and 15 July 2007 in the Gyulai István Athletic Stadium in Debrecen, Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpath ...

Debrecen Debrecen ( ; ; ; ) is Hungary's cities of Hungary, second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain Regions of Hungary, region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the large ...

: ** bronze in the 100 m in 11 s 68 *

2009 Mediterranean Games The 2009 Mediterranean Games, officially the XVI Mediterranean Games () and commonly known as Pescara 2009, was a multi-sport event held in Pescara, Italy, from 26 June to 5 July 2009. It was governed by the International Committee of Mediterran ...

Pescara Pescara (; ; ) is the capital city of the province of Pescara, in the Abruzzo Regions of Italy, region of Italy. It is the most populated city in Abruzzo, with 118,657 (January 1, 2023) residents (and approximately 350,000 including the surround ...

** gold in the 4 × 100 m relay in 43 s 79 ** silver in the 100 m in 11 s 46 *

2010 European Athletics Championships The 2010 European Athletics Championships were the 20th edition of the European Athletics Championships, organised under the supervision of the European Athletic Association. They were held at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys in Barcelona, C ...

: ** gold in the 200 m in 22 s 32 (personal best) ** silver in the 4 × 100 m relay in 42s 45 ** bronze in the 100 m in 11 s 18 *

2012 European Athletics Championships The 2012 European Athletics Championships were held in Helsinki, Finland between 27 June and 1 July 2012. This edition marks the beginning of a new two-year cycle of the European Athletics Championships which were previously held every four years. ...

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

: ** bronze in the 200 m in 23 s 21 *

2013 European Athletics Indoor Championships The 2013 European Athletics Indoor Championships were held at Scandinavium and Svenska Mässan in Gothenburg, Sweden, on 1–3 March 2013. Bidding process The decision to grant the event for Gothenburg was made by the European Athletics Council at ...

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

: ** silver in the 60 m in 7 s 11

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Soumare, Myriam 1986 births Living people Athletes from Paris Olympic athletes for France Athletes (track and field) at the 2008 Summer Olympics Athletes (track and field) at the 2012 Summer Olympics French female sprinters French sportspeople of Mauritanian descent French Muslims European Athletics Championships medalists Mediterranean Games gold medalists for France Mediterranean Games silver medalists for France Athletes (track and field) at the 2009 Mediterranean Games Mediterranean Games medalists in athletics Olympic female sprinters Diamond League winners 21st-century French sportswomen