Huge blow for Jean-Luc Crétier. The Olympic alpine ski champion revealed this Tuesday to franceinfo that he had his gold medal obtained during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano (Japan) stolen. The 59-year-old man was the victim of a burglary at his home in Italy last summer and thus discovered the theft of his precious sesame.
“It’s like someone took off a leg, or even two,” he explained. For a week, I couldn’t sleep. It’s like your heart is being ripped out. » “She had followed me everywhere for 26 years,” adds Jean-Luc Crétier, specifying that the theft of his medal, usually “folded in a pair of socks at the bottom of a drawer”, was clearly “directed”.
“They deactivated the entire alarm system”
“They were well practiced, they deactivated the entire alarm system and destroyed the hard drives with the images,” added the former athlete to France 3. While searching in a piece of furniture, they found my gold medal, which was well hidden. »
The charm was particularly dear to the heart of Jean-Luc Crétier since he never managed to win another downhill outside of these Olympic Games, whether in the World Cup or the World Championship. However, we will have to make do with this gaping wound, since the Italian police decided to stop the search after a few months of investigation.
Jean-Luc Crétier still tried his luck with the IOC and the Japanese Olympic committee to try to recover a medal. But the manufacturer of the medals in question has died. He still hopes that a solution will be found and dreams of being awarded a new medal at the 2030 Winter Olympics held in France.
