FACTOIDS
Full Name: Kim Gevaert
Nickname: Kim
Birthday: August 5, 1978
Height: 5’7”
Hometown: Leuven, Belgium
Sports: Track & Field
PROFILE
Kim Gevaert single handedly doubled Belgium's gold medal tally in the history of the European Athletics Championships when she won the 100m/200m double in Gothenburg, but typically her first thoughts were for her coach, Rudi Diels: "He wanted this more than anything. A day like this is unbelievably stressful."
With national records of 11.04 and 22.20 in 2006, Gevaert has had the most successful season of an athletics career that could so easily never have happened. Born in Kampenhout to the north east of Leuven, Gevaert played the flute and classical piano and had a career mapped out in the concert halls of the world until one day, out of boredom, she accompanied her elder brother, Marlon, to the local track and tried her hand at sprinting. Recognising her talent, the local club snapped her up and the concert halls faded into history.
By 1995, as a 16-year-old, she was winning a gold medal at the European Youth Olympics in Bath, England, just one year after that trip to the local track. Seven years later came the watershed year of 2002, when she took a European Athletics Indoor Championships gold medal as a prelude to two silvers at the European Athletics Championships in Munich that summer.
Apart from her athletics, Gevaert has a degree in speech therapy from the University of Leuven and actively encourages sport amongst the nation's youth by giving regular athletics clinics at schools. More recently, she branched out into the world of entertainment, doing a voice-over for a documentary on the Ice Age. She plans to start a family with her boyfriend, hurdler Djéké Mambo, but not until after the 2008 Olympics. Mambo claims they were meant for each other since they were born in the same town and the same hospital.
