Retired Cyrille Maret will always be giant

French Olympic medallist in 2016 Cyrille Maret (34) announced his retirement. Maret was always an important member of the French team for a decade.

Maret won the Grand Slam of Paris three times in a row 2014-2016 and took six consecutive medals since 2013 and added his seventh with silver last year October. Maret also claimed six European medals 2013-2019. We started to know him better when he became the 2006 Junior World Champion but he never won a senior World Championships medal. His Olympic medal in Rio was all worth it. Maret won World and European medals with the team of France including European gold in 2015 at the European Games. He took five French titles since 2010. He took 14 Grand Slam medals including four victories and won two Grand Prix events and 19 IJF World Tour medals.

Maret joined French performance institute INSEP at the age of 17. “It was Stéphane Traineau who asked us to join INSEP. Suddenly, I was on the tatami with him, whom I had seen with my child's eyes. I discovered the level of Ghislain Lemaire. I couldn't put a hand on the kimono but he was the guy you had to go get at each session. He never refused me a randori. This is my judo reference, I remember taking techniques that I didn't even know existed. “

“Taking the train after the last training session of the week to find myself the next morning hunting with the dogs in the forest, going carp fishing or making the boar terrine, it's my life too", Maret said about his hobby.

Eventually as a cadet Maret started as a heavyweight +90kg but the category U100kg was the most logical for him as a junior. At his club Levallois he was a value as heavyweight and also in the French team he always proved his value. A successful career followed in the U100 kg category.

A turning point for Maret was his heavy accident with a scooter which occurred in October 2020. Exit of many dreams and judo, but Maret came back with a fantastic final place at the Grand Slam in Paris last year. “I think that was one of the times when I thought it was a good time to hang up. I attended the Paris Tournament, I went to see my friends, but at no time did I feel the need, the desire, to find myself in the middle of Bercy, ”admits the now ex-judoka who will focus on real estate in his next professional career.

Bercy was always the hall of his finest performances. It was with a victory against the Egyptian El Gharbawy that the young colossus from Dijon, who was only eighteen at the time, brilliantly inaugurated his first selection for the Tournoi de Paris. Not much later he was crowned Junior world champion.

In 2021, therefore, for the fifty years of the tournament, the man from Dijon is launching an ultimate challenge with a participation in +100kg. History to write a new page of the magnificent history that binds him to Paris. Losing only in the final against the Russian Tasoev. Maret will always be a giant.