L’history has its heads and its injustices. The name of Ahmed Boughera El Ouafi no longer means much to the French, even the most knowledgeable in sport. However, this Algerian marathon runner carried the tricolor colors high at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928. His gold medal surprises and places him, it is believed, in the Pantheon of French athletes. But other exploits, in particular those of Alain Mimoun, darling of the media, of the French and of General de Gaulle, and his sporting and social decline will rank him among the great forgotten sportsmen. A trio puts him back on track in a very successful comic strip, L’Or d’El Ouafi (ed. Michel Lafon).
The screenplay by Paul Carcenac and Pierre-Roland Saint-Dizier and the drawings by Christophe Girard return to this fabulous but tragic destiny, from the trenches of the First World War – he was an Algerian skirmisher in the Great War – to his assassination in full heart of Paris, killed during a settling of accounts by Algerian nationalist movements. Comics, with a well-mastered script and expressive design without being crude, skilfully handle historical rigor and a romantic aspect – a whole section of the sportsman’s life is totally ignored.
Faster than the cheetah
A worker at Renault, the sportsman experienced a descent into hell that was as spectacular as it was unfair: he was expelled from the French Athletics Federation because he wanted to turn professional and took refuge in the United States where he was employed in a circus – he must run faster than a cheetah. The social – and physical – decay of El Ouafi is summed up magnificently in a succession of boxes on one page.
Splendor and misery of an Olympic champion, such could have been the subtitle of the work and the life of this extraordinary athlete who paved the way for so many others. Except that in the marathon as in history, the hardest thing is to go the distance.
“The Gold of El Ouafi”, by Paul Carcenac, Pierre-Roland Saint-Dizier and Christophe Girard, ed. Michel Lafon, 70 pages, 20.95 euros
