Former France and Manchester United stopper Fabien Barthez has carved out a remarkable post-football career as a racing driver.
Clearly a fan of the fast lane, the 50-year-old shows no signs of slowing down, having already competed in the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
Barthez played for United between 2000 and 2004, having previously helped France win the 1998 World Cup, and Euro 2000.
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His career at United was mixed, to say the least, with his unorthodox brand of shot-stopping amazing and frustrating fans in equal measure.
Following spells at Marseille and Nanes, the goalkeeper retired from football for good in 2007.
However, seemingly unable to scratch that competitive itch in retirement, Barthez would take up a very different hobby soon after.
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In 2008, at the age of 36, he entered his first professional motor race, that being the Porsche Cararra Cup France.
This clearly gave him the racing bug, as a year later, the World Cup hero entered a spate of sportscar races, including the French GT Championship.
The 'apex' of his motorsport career came in the GT Championship, which he won in 2013 alongside Morgan Mouillin-Traffort.
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"I have always been fascinated by motorsport, even when I was playing football. It always intrigued me," Barthez said of his passion for all things cars.
"I wanted to understand what it felt like being in a car. I had to wait until the end of my pro career to try it.
"That said, it's not like football: you can still be good even when you are 35, which was my age when I stopped playing."
In 2018, he appeared on a French TV documentary called Brothers of Sport on L'Equipe channel.
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He recalled having a conversation with former Toyota F1 driver Olivier Panis in 1998 about the possibility of a career switch. This planted a seed in the mind of the goalkeeper, who was about to feature in a home World Cup.
"I spoke to Olivier during the summer. I asked him if I was a World Cup-winning footballer," Barthez remembers.
Another huge milestone in his driving career came in 2014, when Barthez raced in 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time.
The historic endurance race has been won by the likes of Fernando Alonso and Graham Hill - with it still being regarded as one of the toughest motorsport events there is.
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At the 2017 edition, a fearless Barthez recorded top speeds of 206mph on the tough, 8.5-mile configuration.
"I know the course very well. The atmosphere, the spirit," the former Monaco stopper claimed.
"I spent three months learning everything I could. It was a passion that turned into an obsession.
"It was just like football, in terms of preparing, the way the pressure mounted, you see the ground and the stadium, the pressure mounts, everything came back to me."
Sadly, he had to retire from the 2017 competition when his Ligier JS P217 prototype suffered a broken clutch three hours from the end of the race.
Featured Image Credit:Topics: Manchester United, Sir Alex Ferguson, Premier League