History
The origins of the meet date back to 1984 when Michel Zilbermann organised an athletics meeting at the Stade Auguste Delaune. Another meeting in Paris was held annually in the Stade Sébastien Charléty. The two meets collaborated to create a new event in the Stade de France in 1999. Following this, the two meetings officially merged to become one meet in 2000. The meeting's founder Zilbermann died in April 2008 following a long illness.
The 2009 event was marred by heavy rain but Kenenisa Bekele, Kerron Stewart, Sanya Richards and Yelena Isinbayeva all remained on target for the 2009 Golden League jackpot. A particular highlight was Usain Bolt's 9.79 seconds run for the 100 m meet record, which was closely followed by a national-record-breaking Daniel Bailey. There were 46,500 people in attendance to see new French record holder Renaud Lavillenie win the pole vault competition.
Read more about this topic: Meeting Areva
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“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
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“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)