Portland Magazine
Athletics
June 16, 2019
by Amy Shelly '95, '01
EMMANUEL “MANU” ROUDOLFF-LÉVISSE had planned to spend spring break relaxing with friends and family at home in the Parisian suburb of Verrières-le-Buisson. A little R&R seemed like a good idea after a grueling indoor track season, in which he set personal records in the one mile (4:05.69) and 3000m (7:55.05) distances.
But he left his return flight to Portland open-ended, just in case. Just in case he felt rested enough to run in the French Cross Country Championships the following weekend. And just in case he did well enough to qualify for the IAAF World Cross Country Championships two weeks later in Aarhus, Denmark.
Manu says he wasn’t really planning to run, but “at the end of the week, I was feeling good, so I thought ‘why not?’ ”
So, on March 10, after a week at home, Manu laced up his spikes and attacked the soggy course in Vittel—the muddier, the better, in his opinion—and crossed the finish line as the next French national cross country champion.
“I am super happy and very proud of what I achieved,” says Manu, who had previously finished third at the French nationals. “I was leading, but I didn’t really believe I was going to win until the last 30 meters. I kept thinking someone was going to come from behind.”
Manu’s achievement is alone remarkable, but there’s more to this story. There was someone in the crowd cheering him on who knew exactly what Manu had achieved, because this individual, too, had been France’s national champion in this event more than three decades before.
That person was Manu’s father, Pierre Lévisse. He won the same race in 1979, 1984, 1985, and 1986, and he ran his last national championship race on the same Vittel course in 1994.
“My father didn’t say much after I won. He just took me in his arms,” says Manu. “This win was amazing and I feel a sort of pride to put my family’s name at the forefront of cross country again.”
This victory qualified Manu for the World Championships in Denmark on March 30, where he finished in the top 50.
In the fall, Manu will finish his MBA studies and compete in his final cross country season as a Pilot. Then, he’s planning to run his first marathon; he has his sights set on Chicago or Berlin. And he hopes once again to follow in the footsteps of his father, who competed for France in the 1972 Montreal Olympic Games. Manu is aiming to qualify for the Olympic games on his home turf in 2024.
PHOTOS: KMSP/FFA
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