Micheline Ostermeyer

Micheline Ostermeyer (23 December 1922 – 17 October 2001) was a French athlete and concert pianist. She won three medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in shot put, discus throw, and high jump. After retiring from sports in 1950, she became a full-time pianist for fifteen years and then turned to teaching afterwards.

Biography A great-niece of the French author Victor Hugo and a niece of the composer Lucien Laroche, Ostermeyer was born in Rang-du-Fliers, Pas-de-Calais. At the insistence of her mother, she began learning piano at the age of 4, and at 14 she left her family's home in Tunisia to attend the Conservatoire de Paris.

She retired from sports in 1950 after having won two bronze medals at that year's European Championships and continued to pursue a career in music. Her athletic prowess damaged her reputation as a concert pianist, however, and she even avoided playing anything composed by Franz Liszt for six years because she considered him too "sportif". She toured for fifteen years before personal commitments, including the death of her husband, led her to take a teaching job, a post she held until her retirement in the early 1980s. In her final years, she emerged from retirement to give a series of concerts in both France and Switzerland before her death in Bois-Guillaume.