Former French 400m indoor champion Toumany Coulibaly was on Friday sentenced to three years in prison for the latest of a spate of burglaries. Coulibaly, a serial offender, turned up in court for the sentencing - 20 months of which were suspended - wearing a French athletics' team shirt. The 29-year-old, who won the 2015 French indoor title, pleaded guilty at a court in Evry, south of Paris.
Hid latest run-in with police came after a raid on a jewellers and an attempted break in at a phone store at a shopping centre in the Essonne region. With several accomplices he made his escape in a stolen car which crashed into a police car.
Although he fled on foot he was arrested one month later after his DNA was detected on the getaway car's airbag. As well as prison time the one-time Rio Olympics hopeful has been ordered to see a psychiatrist. The presiding judge told him: "It's desperate coming from a boy with so much talent in his legs. It's almost self-destruction." An expert psychiatrist told the court that "he (Coulibaly) sabotages his own performances."
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