The 5,000m at the ASPTT Nice meet on Wednesday was never supposed to be on the schedule. Then Cassandre Beaugrand’s team asked. By the time the gun went, the Paris 2024 Olympic triathlon champion was running for a French record. She got it, in 14:40.77.
That clipped just over three seconds off Margaret Maury’s 14:43.90, which had stood since 2004. It is Beaugrand’s third French senior record in 14 months, after the 5km road in Monaco (14:53, 2025) and the 10km road in Lille (30:52, April 2026).
“I really surprised myself,” she told L’Équipe. “I’m not used to running with pacemakers, so I had to adjust my stride. But there were so many people cheering me on. I couldn’t let them down.”
A race built around the attempt
The ASPTT Nice meet is a club night, not a record stage. It became one because Beaugrand’s team built it that way. Her manager, Julien Galland, called Remy Charpentier, who runs the fields at the Monaco Diamond League and the Nikaïa meet in Nice. They added a 5,000m to the program, installed the Wavelight pacing system, and brought in three pacemakers: Kenyans Emmaculate Jepkosgei and Purity Chepkirui, plus Francine Niyomukunzi of Burundi.
The lights were set for 14:45. That is just inside Maury’s old record, and a touch quicker than her coach Glenn Poleunis had wanted given her training load and recent virus. The brief was to chase the record without emptying the tank.
Her plan: hit 3,000m in 8:50, ride the lights to 4,000m, then race. She took the lead off the pacemakers early. After 3,400m she was on her own. The last two kilometers hurt.
“I was in a lot of pain for the last two kilometers,” she said. She closed hard anyway and ran 14:40.77, more than three seconds inside the record. Paula Radcliffe watched from the stands.
The week behind the time
For anyone wondering what sits behind a 14:40, this was not a taper. The two weeks before Nice were heavy on intensity, partly to claw back from a virus that pulled her out of the WTCS opener in Samarkand. On race morning she still swam three kilometers at the pool in Nice. The day before, she did a swim-run session from her base in Girona, Spain.
It was also her first race of any kind in 2026. She is on the start list for the WTCS in Alghero, Italy, on May 30.
Now what
The time leaves Beaugrand with a decision she was not planning to make. She missed the French Federation’s 14:40.00 qualifying standard, but she met the European one, which puts the European Championships in Birmingham (August 10 to 16) within reach. Taking that spot would mean running the French Championships at the end of July, on top of a triathlon season already short two WTCS stops.
The Monaco Diamond League on July 10 has been on her wish list for years. “My dream of competing in the Diamond League goes way back,” she told AFP via Ouest-France. “I used to look at it with childlike wonder, thinking I wanted to be there someday.”
She has also been honest about what last season felt like. “I wasn’t depressed, but I was definitely in a bad slump and I needed to find things that motivated me. I thought, ‘Why not try athletics?'”
Her takeaway from Nice was simpler than the schedule problem.
“I managed to push through the pain that scared me,” she said. “That’s encouraging for the triathlon season.”
Thursday morning she visited a school in Nice. By the afternoon she was driving back to Girona.
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