Every other Thursday, in its “Offbeat” section, 20 Minutes explores new and unexpected spaces of sports expression. This week, we present the portrait of Anaïs Quemener, a double French marathon champion (2016 and 2022), who recently achieved her personal best time in Berlin (2h29’01”). It’s quite a “revenge on life” for this care assistant who had to face breast cancer in 2015, at the age of 24.
Anaïs Quemener admits that when she learned she had breast cancer in August 2015, she was “completely in denial”. So much so that for her first medical consultation, this 24-year-old care assistant asked Dr. Jean Denarnaud for a delay in starting her treatment so that she could participate in the French marathon championship on October 25th in Rennes. “Yes, you can wait until November, you would make a great French champion, but in a coffin,” replied the oncologist and radiotherapist from Blanc-Mesnil, as he recounts in the documentary Anaïs. This poignant documentary, initiated by Salomon, who has been sponsoring the athlete for a year, will be available on YouTube starting next Tuesday. It is the ultimate feel-good story, in the midst of Pink October, of the remission of an extremely endearing athlete. The director, Hélène Hadjiyianni, who followed Anaïs Quemener for three months at Jean-Verdier Hospital in Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis) where she works exclusively at night, as well as on the trail of her family roots in La Réunion, describes this remarkable 1.51m character as “fire and movement. Right after the last Paris Marathon, she ran 10 km on the same day, just for fun. She is a fascinating and inspiring woman”.
“Running made me feel like I wasn’t sick”
Yes, Anaïs Quemener continues to run, so much so that she has become a double French marathon champion since her illness. She achieved her incredible first victory in September 2016. “A year earlier, it was a big blow for me to learn that I wouldn’t be participating in the 2015 edition,” she confides. “But in my mind, it wasn’t the end. It was clear to me that I would be there in 2016.” And she did so through a battle against cancer, alongside her father Jean-Yves, her lifelong coach.
“We didn’t know how the disease would progress or how I would react to treatment,” explains Anaïs Quemener. “But all I knew was that it was not conceivable for me to stop running. It didn’t matter the pace or the distance, whether it was 2 or 4 km, I needed to run. Sometimes, I could only walk, but I still went out. Because when I went running, I felt like everyone else, I felt like I wasn’t sick. That’s what kept me clinging to life. Why should someone with cancer always have to rest on the couch? It is proven that sports can reduce the risk of recurrence, and the benefits of physical activity are obvious for mental well-being.”
Jean-Yves Quemener, a former French military cross-country champion, remembers being torn when it came to supporting his daughter’s desire to continue with sports throughout her illness. “The ‘sports on prescription’ law [introduced in 2017] didn’t exist yet, and even though I obviously adjusted her sports practice to her condition, I faced criticism,” he admits. This was especially true when he accompanied Anaïs to a race in the Somme in August 2015, where she had planned to compete in the 18 km, long before she was aware of her cancer. “Anaïs had just had her first chemotherapy,” recalls Jean-Yves Quemener. “Fortunately, I had changed her distance to the 10 km… On one hand, I shouldn’t have let her participate in that race, but since she had registered before the illness, symbolically, I couldn’t stop her from participating that day.” While Anaïs still won the women’s 10 km race, “she had lost her smile during that period of sickness.” During the Paris Marathon 2022, Anaïs Quemener achieved a time of 2h37’26”, which she improved by five minutes in the capital in April. – STADION ACTU/SIPA
“I sometimes run 150 km in a week when I work 50 hours at the hospital”
A smile that she finds again, brighter than ever, on September 18, 2016, after becoming the French champion, breaking her personal record (2h55′ compared to 2h59′ before her cancer), six months after the end of her chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments, and a surgical operation. “I wanted to get revenge on life, it was like I had drawn a line under the past,” describes Anaïs Quemener. “You have to know that I didn’t start from scratch because I never stopped running during my illness. And for six months, I couldn’t work at the hospital because I had no immune system. But since I was no longer undergoing treatment, I was able to train a lot and return to my pre-illness level. In my misfortune, it was the only period of my life where I could train, rest, and live like a high-level athlete.”
Afterwards, she resumed her full-time position as a night care assistant, with her “balance of 5-6 hours of sleep per day.” Her job is divided between 50-hour and 20-hour work weeks, with a usual sleep schedule from 9 am to 2 pm, after returning home from work, of course, running. “There is inevitably a significant physical and mental load,” she concedes. “I don’t have the same daily life as other athletes. It’s complicated to juggle everything, but it remains a passionate job. The advantage of sports and illness is that I know my body well and I listen to it. Sometimes I run 150 km in a week while working 50 hours at the hospital.”
She is only two minutes away from the Olympic qualifying standard
This frantic pace doesn’t prevent her from gaining momentum on the international scene, with the support of the atypical Meute Running in Vitry-Mory (Seine-et-Marne), “more like a family than a club,” which she co-founded with her father and a few friends in 2020, and of which she is the vice-president. The former French record holder in the 10 km for cadets breaks her personal records left and right, with her second French championship title in November 2022 in Deauville (2h40’37”), and the recent Paris Marathon in April (2h32’12”). With training volumes of up to 210 km per week last month, Anaïs Quemener stunned everyone on September 24 at the Berlin Marathon. Her incredible time of 2h29’01” is the second-best French performance of the year in this distance of 42.195 km, and even the seventh in the history of French women’s marathon. Could she be a part of the Paris 202
