Johnny Bur joined his first club—Olympia Club Schitigheim, just north of Strasbourg in eastern France—when he was 9 years old. And he’s still a member. In fact he’s now one of its leading lights, known for both his hometown loyalty and his performance in the ring. It’s all a far cry from his childhood, when he wrestled with sister, who was one year older. “She’d hurt me and sometimes made me cry,” he says. But even then, his passion for wrestling was his safe place: “I struggled in school,” says Johnny, “and wrestling was good way to channel my energy. Training put a smile back on my face.”

The turning point? His 3rd-place finish in the French championships for young athletes, called minimes. Coached by former world wrestling champs Yvon Reimer and Alben Koumbarov, Johnny threw himself into the sport body and soul, training every single night and then some. He would arrive before his opponents and carry on long after they’d headed off to shower. Hard work that paid off when he won the French Cadet Championships (under 69kg) in 2012. It was his first national title, followed by a string of others in various age groups, including French National Champion in under 77kg Greco-Roman wrestling in 2023.

“I finished secondary school with a vocational training certificate in industrial equipment maintenance in 2014. But I was then unemployed for a year, and again for a few months between the end of 2018 and July 2019, when I joined SNCF. Those were tough times—years when I had only the haziest vision of what shape my future might take. Today I feel like I’m moving from the shadows into the light. Just a few months’ back, I had no clear career path and was struggling to make ends meet. Now, for the first time, I’ve got a secure job that corresponds to my diploma, with a regular salary  and an employer that lets me keep on competing at the highest level. It’s without any doubt the best possible way for me to combine my two careers and look ahead to my future. It takes a real weight off my shoulders.

At SNCF, my team handles trainset refurbishment. We trip out high-speed carriages and refitting them with new seats, carpets, windows and so on. It’s a job that suits me down to the ground because I’m a hands-on guy. The work itself is varied, which I really like. The icing on the cake? The atmosphere—it’s friendly, almost like a family.”