2023-07-20 00:44:00
A popular celebration and a harvest of medals for the French team, such were the ambitions of the organizers and competitors involved in these Para-Athletics World Championships. But after ten days of competition on the track of the Charléty stadium in Paris (13th), the results are mixed. The organizers assure us, and despite a regularly empty East stand, they exceeded “more than 100,000 spectators” as expected, with 10,000 people present on average each day. On the other hand, sportingly, the Blues have only won four medals at these Worlds, all in bronze.
The long jumper Manon Genest had however paved the way from the second day of competition by taking third place in the competition reserved for the T37 category, bringing together athletes with cerebral palsy or similar. “A big pride”, for the athlete, who had then dedicated his medal to his daughter, aged just over a year. Valentin Bertrand had imitated him on the same event a few days later.
Nevertheless, with a young team, which included 14 new selected, the French have generally lacked success. Twelve times they failed at the gates of fourth place, synonymous with the qualifying quota for the Games.
“We expected much better”
Above all, of the 492 medals distributed in the competition, France therefore only collected four and finished in a distant 58th place in the ranking of nations, far behind China and its 45 medals. Even Timothée Adolphe, yet double bronze medalist in the 100m and 400m (category T11, reserved for the visually impaired), did not come out fully satisfied with these championships. “We were aiming higher,” he explained.
“We expected much better. I had announced between five and seven medals, dropped Guy Ontanon, the performance manager for French disabled athletics during a press briefing on Monday. There were a lot of personal records, we had 36 finalists all the same, there were two European records. We won five quotas for the Games… This is not a negative result in itself, but we are not going to be happy with this level. »
Dimitri Pavade, silver medalist in Tokyo in the long jump and last-minute withdrawal due to a serious knee injury, was certainly missed by the Blues. But other athletes, however experienced, failed to repeat their performances from previous championships. This was the case of Arnaud Assoumani, 4th in the long jump final bringing together the categories T45, T46 and T47 (amputation on the upper body), yet a quadruple Olympic medalist. “I know I can go much further. Everything is fine physically, I know what remains to be worked on, ”confided after the fact the athlete author of a best jump at 6.97 m.
Just over a year away from taking over the Stade de France for the Paralympic Games in Paris (August 28-September 8, 2024), the site seems vast for the athletes of the French disabled sports team.
“We have to get out of this little ivory tower in which we have put ourselves at the level of the federation, at the level of our athletes, adds Guy Ontanon. You have to show them that to succeed, to perform well, you actually need talent, but that you also need a lot of time and work. And today, we may not have put all these ingredients in place yet. “ Para-athletes will have one last major deadline before joining the capital and the French public: the next World Championships in the discipline organized in Japan next February.
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