Stade Adolphe-Chéron

The ground in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés carries a name that has little to do with the games played on it. The city council renamed the venue after Adolphe Chéron, a politician who helped build it, rather than the athlete whose name might have stuck. The Michel Jazy stand, however, tells a different story. The French middle-distance runner broke three world records here in the 1960s, and the main stand carries his name to this day.

The stadium opened in 1922 with a capacity of 10,000, but the modern site holds a fraction of that. A new main stand erected in the late 1980s reduced the figures to 3,500, and the pitch is currently covered in synthetic turf. The ground has seen two long periods of renovation between the war years and the 1970s, but the current surface dates from a project approved in 2017.

The wall of the ground preserves its own history in bronze plaques. One plate records Guy Drut setting the world record for the 110m hurdles in 1975, while another honours Roger Quemeneur for his 100km track performance in 1976. These are the types of moments the venue is associated with, rather than the football matches played by US Lusitanos Saint-Maur, who moved here in the 1990s. The Portuguese club has made the ground its home, but the stadium remains a place where the past is displayed on the walls more prominently than the present is played out on the field.