Former world number 10 in heptathlon, Laurien Bourguignon-Hoos, has returned to the stadiums for the past two years to achieve one final goal: to participate in her second Olympic Games this summer in Rio.
After several years of complete withdrawal, Laurien Bourguignon-Hoos’s return to the highest global level is not as effortless as she might have hoped. With up to 12 training sessions per week this winter, the 32-year-old heptathlete has noticed that she no longer recovers as quickly as she did in 2005, the year she won the European Under-23 Championship.
However, now free of the recurrent injuries that ended her “first career,” she firmly believes in her chances of stepping onto the track in Rio.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she had to drop out due to a serious injury, marking the beginning of a long period away from the tracks.
After a remarkable comeback to the stadiums in 2015, the young woman is determined to realize her efforts this summer to experience a second Olympic journey after Beijing, this time representing France.
Following her marriage to French athlete Rudy Bourguignon in June 2015, Laurien is indeed eligible to compete for France. “It would be a great pleasure to represent the country that welcomed me from 2007 to 2010 in Amiens and since early 2014 in Nice,” she stated.
To qualify for the Olympic Games (August 5-21), she must achieve the minimum requirement of 6300 points, which is 9 points more than her personal record set in 2005.
As a rehearsal, she aims for a first selection at the European Championships in Amsterdam (July 6-10), for which she must first surpass the 6000-point threshold.
