While 2.8 million tickets are on sale from Monday to attend the wheelchair rugby or sitting volleyball events during the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, franceinfo met the supervisors and a young athlete from the “inclusive club” program “, in Pessac.
By the swimming pool Caneton, in Pessac (Gironde), the lifeguard François-Xavier Poirier, yellow t-shirt in the color of the swimming club, speaks to Ilian, a swimmer suffering from Down syndrome. The 17-year-old young man has been doing laps of the pool for more than half an hour with his white cap on his head and his glasses.
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This club is an “inclusive club”: it is part of the training program for supervisors, launched by the CPSF, the French Paralympic and Sports Committee, to support 3,000 clubs between now and the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Because, according to the Ministry of Sports, only 1.4% of clubs open their doors to people with disabilities. This makes less than 2,000 clubs out of the 180,000 listed in 2022.
“An opening for the mind”
“This training is an opening for the mind, but it is also an opening for the club to move towards adapted sport, towards disabled sport, whether competitive or not, explains François-Xavier, the lifeguard, who followed the “inclusive club” training at the start of the year. This is the credo of our association: to try to welcome everyone.”
After each swim, Ilian stops at the edge of the pool and Ugo, another lifeguard, advises him and encourages him. “He has to adjust his breathing, and then it will be easier to find his swimming style, says Ugo. Like the whole group, you have to repeat several times, they are still children!”
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Ilian is a very dynamic young man, passionate about sport and swimming. He is following training, a CAP in hotel management. “I did crawl, breaststroke, and butterfly swimming”he rejoices, as he leaves the pool.
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His father Patrick is even forced to slow him down in his projects. “Last year, we didn’t find a club. We looked around the clubs in Bordeaux, we didn’t find any, confides his father. We were told that the clubs were full. I saw it as a pretext.”
“For a boy who has Down syndrome, who has speech difficulties, who is not understood well, it’s a way to express himself, to assert himself and to win.”
Patrick, father of Ilianat franceinfo
Adapting to physical disabilities, especially after a stroke
Since the training, the ASCPA swimming of Pessac has welcomed five swimmers with disabilities: Ilian, suffering from Down syndrome, people with physical disabilities, and in particular stroke victims.
The plan is to multiply this figure in the coming years. 2.8 million tickets are on sale from Monday October 9 to attend the wheelchair rugby or sitting volleyball events during the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
An inclusive swimming club in Pessac (Gironde) – Report by Guillaume Battin