Athletics: Frenchman Wilfried Happio sentenced to 6 months suspended imprisonment for domestic violence

Athlete Wilfried Happio, 400m hurdler, was sentenced Wednesday in Créteil to six months' suspended imprisonment for violence against an ex-partner.

The hurdler admitted during the hearing to acts of verbal violence, saying he was “the main person responsible” for a “toxic relationship”, who had fallen into an “infernal spiral”, but rejected the accusations of physical violence. The court found him guilty of the alleged offenses and sentenced him to six months' imprisonment, fully suspended, as well as to pay 2,000 euros in damages to the victim, with a ban on contacting her and appearing at her home.

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But the court agreed not to enter the conviction in bulletin no. 2 of his criminal record, as requested by his defense so as not to hinder his professional life, but against the opinion of the prosecution. The complainant, Hajar Hajjia Goncalves, 28, said she was “relieved”, nevertheless claiming to feel “a little aftertaste of bitterness all the same, in the sense that (Mr. Happio) did not recognize the facts”.

“I felt a little neglected at that level,” she added. “The court rendered an important decision today, I think it recalled an essential truth: that no violence, whether physical or psychological, can be tolerated within the couple,” underlined his lawyer, Me Lina Belkora.

Semi-finalist at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

Mr. Happio's lawyers, Mes Marie-Anne Peyrat and Pierre-François Feltesse, did not wish to comment immediately. The prosecution had requested a prison sentence of 12 months with a simple suspended sentence of five years. The complainant first recounted in the columns of the daily Le Monde the violence she said she suffered between 2018 and 2019, when she was in a relationship with the screamer.

Under the assumed first name Maria, she recounted, with supporting photos and through a multitude of episodes, the violence of which she claimed to have been a victim, showing images of her “thigh covered in a hematoma”, those of a bloody jogger or even a swollen jaw after “a huge punch in the head”. The 28-year-old athlete was the subject of a disciplinary procedure launched internally in mid-2024 by the French Athletics Federation (FFA), which also took legal action, after the testimony of his ex-partner in the press.

Despite the disciplinary procedure, the FFA, relying on the presumption of innocence, maintained his selection for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, where he was a semi-finalist. He had previously been the subject of a complaint for sexual assault for actions allegedly committed at Insep (National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance).

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The complaint before the courts was dismissed in June 2023. Six months earlier, he had not been sanctioned following an internal Insep investigation either. On another note, Wilfried Happio was suspended at the start of 2025 for breaches of his anti-doping obligations by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU).