“Joseph Maigrot (1900-1983): a track and field coach who pioneered a French style of coaching”

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper concerns the study of an eminent figure – Joseph Maigrot (1900–1983) – whose personality had a lasting impact on the development of athletics in France, influencing even the way coaching was conceived. After a fruitful experience in gymnastics and sports, Maigrot helped to build up and manage a team of track and field coaches at the National Sport Institute in Paris during the 1940s to 1960s, and in the French Athletics Federation In the framework of this study, we see how his personality, his personal and professional career, may have influenced his style, methods and the knowledges mobilised in the federal field. Maigrot is indeed responsible for the choice of technical processes of foreign origin and for the eclectic training methods – tinged with realism, pragmatism, humanism and empiricism.