Eunice Barber

Barber at the 2007 World Cup

Eunice Barber ( born November 17, 1974 in Freetown ) is a French athlete Sierra Leonean origin.

For the first time in 1990 they came through the support of a French development aid program to France. As in her home country, a civil war broke out, she decided to come for ever to France, and was naturalized in 1999. For Sierra Leone, she launched at the World Athletics Championships in Gothenburg in 1995 and was fourth in the heptathlon. At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta it was for Sierra Leone fifth in the heptathlon. Your first international competition for France, she contested at the World Athletics Championships in 1999 in Seville and was equal to world champion. In the same year she was on the sports newspaper L' Équipe France's Sportswoman of the Year ( " champion of champions" ) selected.

At the World Athletics Championships in Paris in 2003 it delivered is an exciting competition with Carolina Kluft, the young star of athletics from Sweden. Started as a favorite, she won the silver medal behind Kluft. Surprisingly, she won this World Championships gold medal in the long jump.

Due to injury, she could not compete in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. 2005, however, she went to work with a personal best in a heptathlon meeting in Arles French impressive comeback. She scored 6,889 points and was here at the World Athletics Championships in Helsinki in 2005 as the biggest competitor of Olympic champion Carolina Kluft, what she was able to confirm on the first day of the competition. Before the last three races on August 7, they led with just 2 points ahead and before the final 800 - meter race, she had 15 points behind Kluft, so that it came to a showdown over 800 m. Barber was the race approached very brave at a fast pace and had worked out to 200 m from the finish a projection which would have been enough for the world title. With a furious final sprint of the Swede and the decline of its own forces, they still lost the race and won the silver medal with 53 points behind. These World Championships, she was able to win a bronze medal in the long jump 3 days later.

On March 18, 2006, she was arrested for a traffic offense in Paris by police units and so badly injured that she was declared unfit for work for a week. On a video is to see how it is pressed by half a dozen police officers on the hood of her car and then to the ground. According to Barber It should be like racist remarks. Conversely, accused the police Barber of resistance against the state. An independent commission of inquiry came in early 2007 on the conclusion that the version of the police officers was not credible. In the following years, the charges against Barber unsubstantiated; yet the judiciary to initiate an investigation against the police officers involved refused.

Not only this incident, but also injuries threw Barber back in the subsequent period. At the European Championships in Gothenburg in 2006 she had to give up the heptathlon after two events due to a hip injury. 2007 and 2008, she focused on the long jump, but retired at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka in the qualifier. 2008 she failed to qualify for the Olympic Games in Beijing.

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