France's triple Olympic champion Marie-Jose Perec announced her retirement from athletics at the age of 36 today.
Perec, who won the 400 metres at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and then completed a 200 and 400 double at the 1996 Atlanta Games, said she had made her decision last September after missing the world championships through injury.
"For a few weeks, I tried to run again several times with the Athens Olympics in mind," Guadeloupe-born Perec told sports daily l'Equipe.
"Symbolically, I could see myself finishing my career in the Olympics homeland. I jogged a little, in Paris and at home in Guadeloupe but I could feel my body telling me to stop it, that it was enough," she said.
Perec, who was world champion over 400 metres in 1991 and 1995, said her ideal farewell would have been to win a fourth Olympic gold in Sydney four years ago.
But instead of defending her 400 metres title in a much anticipated clash with Australia' Cathy Freeman, Perec fled the Olympics claiming to have received death threats.
She returned to training in February 2003 but pulled out of the world championships in Paris with a sciatic nerve injury.