Laura Montauban

Happy birthday to France’s sprint hurdler Laura Montauban, who spent the past year rebuilding her event from the ground up and came out of it faster.

In February, at the French U23 Indoor Championships in Nantes, Laura took silver over 60m hurdles in 8.17, a personal best. That is the third time in two seasons she has moved that mark: 8.26, then 8.23, then 8.17. She said afterwards that she had come to Nantes to win and was still adapting to her new environment, which is a fairly remarkable thing to say while setting a lifetime best.

The new environment is the whole story. Laura left AO Charenton in the Paris suburbs and joined Ketty Cham’s training group at the Pôle de Guadeloupe, a full relocation at nineteen, in an event where technical change is measured in centimetres of stride and hundredths of a second. Hurdlers do not casually change coaches. The event is built on a rhythm pattern drilled into the body over years, and unpicking it in order to build a better one is the single most uncomfortable thing a hurdler can choose to do.

She has a 13.02 over the 100m hurdles, a mark that put her among the fastest U20 hurdlers in Europe, and she has already run the World U20 Championships in Lima, where she reached the semi-finals. A hurdler willing to take apart something that already worked, in order to find what will work at senior level, is a hurdler worth following for the next ten years.

Joyeux anniversaire, Laura! Tous nos vœux les plus sincères, et que l’année qui vient te trouve encore plus vite entre les haies. 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇫🇷