At the Paralympics, teenagers with intellectual disabilities take on the Games

Adolescents from Marne with intellectual disabilities, accompanied by middle school students, attended tests in Paris on Thursday. The culmination of a year of work to “break the bad image of mental disabilities”.

Suddenly, they jump out of their seats. As the cameras at the Arena Champ-de-Mars film the spectators in the stands before the start of the parajudo events on Thursday 5 September, the director focuses on Malika, Tristan, Noé and the young people from the Blacy (Marne) Medical-Educational Institute (IME), sitting in the eleventh row. Some are shouting, calling their educators, while others are trying, in vain, to take out their phones to immortalize the moment.

It had been more than a year since these teenagers aged 12 to 15 years old, suffering from an intellectual disability, were waiting for him. Since a neighboring college near Vitry-le-François contacted them to involve them in their project to go to Paris for the Paralympic Games thanks to the “Ma classe aux Jeux” program, which allows students from all over France to attend events for free. This rapprochement was imagined to change the way people look at disability, work on the empathy of middle school students, and learn to live together.

“The idea is to break the bad image of disability [mental] and to show that young people in IME are capable of many things”summarizes Nicolas Algisi. This educator within the medical-educational institute takes care of these children with intellectual disabilities on a daily basis, which prevents them from following a so-called traditional school curriculum. This Thursday, the gang from the IME in Blacy took the TGV at dawn with the third-year students from the Pierre-Gilles de Gennes college in Frignicourt. Among other things, they watched the fights of Sandrine Martinet, silver medalist in – 48 kg in the J2 category intended for visually impaired judokas.

The judoka’s handicap did not strike Vingenzo of the IME, impressed by her “rolls” and the din of the Arena at each fight of the Frenchwoman. No more than Ethan. “If I hadn’t been told that athletes were disabled and that we were at the Paralympic Games, I wouldn’t have known”assures the schoolboy in the flashy pink T-shirt of the German football team. Before the round ball, he did judo in a club and started parajudo during a session shared between the college and the Medical-Educational Institute, during which all the young people were blindfolded. This initiation was designed as part of the “My Class at the Games” project to introduce parasport to middle school students.

His friend, Sidoine, also got to know the young people at the IME and the sport appealed to him. “helped to better understand how they live”. “At our age, many people judge and if we are different, we can be ostracized“, sighs the teenager, who is part of a group of ambassadors at the college on the issue of harassment. In charge of an adapted class at the college for children with disabilities, Valentin Georget believes that “Sport breaks down barriers.”

“Parents often have prejudices that they pass on to their children. When you hear some of them say: ‘He [ou elle] will not go to the morons’ about their son or daughter…”

Valentin Georget, educator at the Pierre-Gilles de Gennes college

to franceinfo

For children with intellectual disabilities, traveling to Paris, taking the metro and dealing with crowds are challenges in themselves. “Some have never taken the train, others have never seen the Eiffel Tower. That’s also part of the adventure”rejoices Nicolas Algisi at the end of the judo events, while several young people pose in front of the emblematic Paris building.

In addition to the tests, the educators also decided to introduce the teenagers to the capital and its monuments. “Everyone soaks up this day in their own way, summarizes Marion, educator at the IME. In their journey, it is a way of opening them up to the outside world, of making them gain autonomy, of making them aware of an environment, of current events.”

Noah and Evan, the two brothers with intellectual disabilities who knew only the Parc des Princes and the Eiffel Tower of Paris, thus discovered the Seine, the Trocadéro and the incessant noise of “flashing lights”. On the magnificent site of the Invalides, they also attended the para-archery events, a sport of “darts” that they had already practiced at the IME.

The event, although pleasant, was a bit long to follow for these fans of football and Kylian Mbappé. If Noé and Evan, like Bachir who wears a Real Madrid jersey with his name on it, have the physical and mental abilities to play football, integration into a club does not always go well.

“In team sports, young people with intellectual disabilities play with children who are there to win, while they just want to have fun. As soon as there is competition, they are left aside. They participate in training, but not in matches, so they are directed towards individual sports instead.”regrets Nicolas Algisi, who teaches some people parajudo. “You just have to adapt : repeat the instructions, spend more time, sometimes avoid teaching them gestures like armlocks that they could reproduce without realizing how dangerous they are.”

As in the Paralympic Games, where only three sports are open to athletes with intellectual disabilities (swimming, athletics, table tennis), the practice of adapted sport is struggling to develop in France. Only 1 300 clubs exist, according to the French Federation of Adapted Sports. In Vitry-le-François, none can accommodate young people from the IME, which sometimes prevents them from doing sport outside their structure. “We should already train club coaches in disability, which is still scary, and invest money. It depends on the State, the federations and people’s motivation”believes Nicolas Algisi. While waiting to find a suitable sports club in Vitry-le-François one day, the instructor will continue to give judo lessons to Vingenzo, Malika and the others, who have returned from Paris with their heads full of dreams.