Double world athletics champion Eunice Barber, crowned in the heptathlon in 1999 and the long distance in 2003, was slightly injured in the face Monday evening after an altercation with another traveler aboard a Paris commuter train, we learned on Tuesday from a police source.
A little before 11 p.m., the former athlete boarded a Transilien in Franconville (Val-d’Oise) heading to Gare du Nord, in Paris. Eunice Barber, 49, then asked “a drunken traveler” to speak less loudly on the phone and received “two blows to the face” in return, causing a slight injury to her “right cheekbone”, according to the police source. She filed a complaint at the police station.
The man, aged 43, was arrested when the train arrived at Gare du Nord before being taken into police custody, the same source added. Eunice Barber hung up her phone in the early 2010s. She has been a sports coach ever since.
