Charles Coste, 100 years old, is the oldest living Olympic champion and will be a torchbearer at this summer’s Paris Olympics. He was born Feb. 8, 1924, in Ollioules, France, and at age 24, in 1948, he was selected for the first postwar Games. He was French pursuit champion and put off entering professional racing for a year in order to compete in the Olympics. “My club advised me to wait. They told me, ‘If you are an Olympic champion, you will be one for life.’”
As a professional he already won one of the biggest cycling competitions of the time in his first year: the Grand Prix des Nations, beating Fausto Coppi. He described himself by saying, “I was a rider but mostly a chaser. I raced every Sunday at the Vel d’Hiv, there were 15,000 people in the stands. For the road races it was the same, everywhere I went there was an incredible crowd.” Coste raced the Tour de France twice and the Giro d’Italia four times.
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