Four-time European champion Christophe Lemaitre from France has announced his retirement at the age of 34.
Lemaitre has also won two medals at the World Athletics Championships as well as a pair of Olympic medals but his dream of competing on home soil at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was scuppered by a recurring calf injury.
"The reasons are pretty simple. It's just that I did everything this year to take part in the Paris Games, except that I didn't succeed, unfortunately.
"There was yet another calf injury that appeared and that scuppered all my chances of hoping to qualify," Lemaitre told AFP.
Lemaitre broke through on the senior stage at the age of 20 at the Barcelona 2010 European Athletics Championships where he swept the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay titles to become the first - and only - male sprinter to achieve the sprint treble in European Athletics Championships history.
Lemaitre also picked up four more European medals across the 2012 and 2014 editions and his overall haul of eight medals makes him the most bemedalled male athlete in European Athletics Championships.
On the global stage, Lemaitre won 200m bronze medals at the 2011 World Athletics Championships and 2016 Olympic Games and has been part of medal-winning 4x100m teams at both championships.
Lemaitre retires with lifetime bests of 9.92 for 100m and 19.80 for 200m. Both marks remain European U23 records and his 200m lifetime best still ranks fourth on the European all-time list.
Steven Mills for European Athletics