Videographer, athlete, entrepreneur: Nicolas Viot’s triple life
© LA NTVAfter breaking three hours at the 2025 Barcelona Marathon, Perpignan native Nicolas Viot has spent the past year building a training center in Mont-Louis, near Font-Romeu. Life moves at full speed for the runner who shares his passion on his La NTV YouTube channel.
Covid was the turning point
It was one of those Covid evenings. As usual, Nicolas and his older brother Thomas were watching videos from Sweat Elite, a channel specializing in running. Nicolas was only 16 at the time. It was a source of inspiration. “We started out with strength-training livestreams,” he recalls. Altitude camps, training sessions, vlogs: the brothers began documenting every detail of their preparation on their La NTV YouTube channel. Running quickly got under his skin. The teenager left triathlon behind, a sport he had practiced since middle school.
In March 2023, the Pyrenean athlete took a new direction: putting athletes in the spotlight. Now behind the camera, the LUC Athlétisme Lille athlete followed Alexis Turpin’s race at the Paris Half Marathon, a familiar face to the Viot family. “He was a friend of my brother’s.” The content kept coming, and so did the opportunities. He made up his mind: he would spend a month in South Africa following French athletes as they prepared for the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, from August 19 to 27, 2023, and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. It was a full immersion with some of France’s leading track athletes: Yann Schrub, Romain Mornet, Bastien Augusto, Louis Gilavert, Yani Khelaf, Azeddine Habz… A seriously impressive lineup.
© LA NTV
© LA NTV
© LA NTVA home-built training center
Based in northern France while studying sports science and journalism, the 21-year-old distance runner has stayed true to his path. “I still post a video almost every week.” Most recently, he followed Martin Desmidt (Coureurs de Fond du Cateau) at the French Cross Country Championships in Challans on March 3. “I’m completely independent. I make my videos from A to Z. It’s a valuable learning experience. That’s what drives me.” His decision to focus on long-form content was a deliberate one. “Unlike TikTok or Instagram, on YouTube, people have to seek out the content.”
And because he clearly has no limits when it comes to his ambitions, he and his family decided to open a training center in 2024 in Mont-Louis, Occitanie, at an altitude of 1,600 m. It is a 15-minute drive from Lake Matemale and the Font-Romeu athletics track. “We offer accommodation and training camps,” says the athlete who films with a Panasonic Lumix GH5. “My father, who’s a tradesman, renovated the entire building. My brother built the website. My parents handle the logistics. It’s a home-built operation,” he says with a smile.
The new venture has already attracted attention. Mustapha Salmi, who has run 29:51 for 10K in Barcelona, traveled to the Pyrénées-Orientales to talk about his journey. A 20-minute feature… and more than 70,000 views. Not exactly a windfall on the paycheck. “That’s not what matters to us. What we really enjoy is sharing training sessions and having human experiences.”
© la NTV
© LA NTV
© LA NTVParis, Barcelona… and Mont-Blanc marathons
The former student in the general economics and business preparatory program has not hung up his racing shoes. Far from it. After clocking 2:49 at the Paris Marathon last year, the former 800 m specialist, whose personal best is 1:58, did it again in Barcelona in 2025. “I went through halfway in 1:20 before hitting the infamous wall at 30K.” The 20-year-old still managed to take a healthy chunk off his personal best, crossing the line in 2:46:26.
Never one to settle, he is set to race the 50K at Trail 100 Andorra by UTMB this Saturday, June 14. “I’m averaging around 90 km a week,” says the athlete who commentated on the Toulouse international meeting for the second consecutive year, live on Stadion’s Facebook page. “Then I’ll head to the Mont-Blanc Marathon at the end of June. We’ll obviously make a video.” Nicolas Viot’s love of images comes from someone dear to him: his grandfather. Jean-Charles Cozic was a well-known name in the press, having worked as a journalist for Presse-Océan. “We used to go to the Photojournalism Festival in Perpignan together,” he recalls. His grandfather died suddenly on February 14, 2024, aged 76, but there is no doubt that he is following his grandson’s progress closely. With passion and emotion.