Armand Thoinet, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, succeeds in his new challenge of walking from London to Paris between the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games

Walking from London to Paris pushing a wheelchair. This is the challenge taken up by Armand Thoinet, 31, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. A way of showing, like the Paralympic athletes, that disability can take different forms and that it does not prevent you from living great adventures.

Armand Thoinet loves challenges. Since his multiple sclerosis was diagnosed in 2012, the Rhone native has embarked on many adventures with one credo: “I can’t wait to be healed to start living.” His latest journey took him to the “City of Light” from London, on foot and pushing a wheelchair. A brilliantly successful 18-day journey and an arrival on the Champs-Élysées on Wednesday, August 28 for the opening of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.

The idea of ​​taking on this challenge came about as the Games in France approached. “My goal is to create adventures that no one else does to convey human messages. For a long time, I had the idea of ​​pushing a wheelchair to talk about disability, to show that disability was not just a wheelchair. Less than 5% of disabled people are in a wheelchair.he explains. I love sports and I’ve always been a fan of the Olympics and the Paralympics. There’s always this space between the two competitions. I wanted to create a bridge between the Olympics and the Paralympics.”

With his friend Julien, he went to London, from where he set off on August 11, the day the Paris Olympic Games ended. “I chose London because the beginnings of the Paralympic Games were held in 1948 in Stoke Mandeville, a small town north of London. This led to the first Paralympic Games in Rome in 1960. London is also the Olympics that brought real visibility to the Paralympic Games in 2012, he tells. There was a lot of symbolism.”

From the first days, Armand tries to create a routine for himself. “We get up at 6am, leave at 7am. We try to do two thirds of the day before eating, reports the adventurer. So in the afternoon, there is not much left to do except find a new bivouac spot.” Not an easy task because you have to search and find a possible site on Google Maps and this sometimes takes a lot of time.

Throughout the course, the physical effort is significant but Armand Thoinet likes to take on this kind of challenge. “At the beginning, we tried to do between 28 and 30 kilometers per day. This allowed us to get ahead. At the end, I was averaging around 25 kilometers. Overall, I should be averaging 27 or 28 kilometers per day.” Impressive performances with multiple sclerosis but that Armand managed to normalize. The young thirty-something is not at his first attempt. For ten years, the many challenges he sets for himself have taken him to many places and to many exploits.

First in Corsica in 2015 with a half-tour of the island by kayak. “I had never done that in my life and I went it alone. It was an incredible first experience for me. Very hard physically, mentally because I really didn’t know anything and when I came back from this adventure, I said to myself: that’s it, I’ve found what I wanted to do with my life.”

The following year, he continued the kayaking adventure with the descent of the Haut-Rhône. In 2017, he turned to tandem cycling this time with two routes: Montpellier-Périgeux and Lyon-Montélimar before ending the year with a crossing on foot of the Corsican desert of Agriates.

If in 2018, Armand Thoinet completed an impressive triathlon (kayak, bike, walk) of 685 kilometers between Évian-les-Bains and Le Puy-en-Velay, the following year he achieved the feat achieved in total by less than 100 people in the world of reaching 80^e North parallel kayaking in the Arctic Circle “to show that together we can go to the ends of the earth”. An exceptional performance immortalized in a film, his first of three films he released about his adventures, while perhaps waiting for a fourth.

The years go by and so do the challenges. In 2022, he went to Morocco to climb Mount Toubkal, the highest peak in the High Atlas and North Africa at 4,167 metres, accompanied by Sara, one of the first Moroccan mountain guides. And since that wasn’t enough for this year, Armand also broke the pedal boat world record in 2022 by going around Corsica, an exceptional distance of 574.5 kilometres. In 2023, he travelled to Paris from Lyon on a balance bike, an 800-kilometre adventure that had a big impact on him.

Armand Thoinet always lives his adventures to the fullest. This was still the case at the beginning of August in the days preceding his departure from London: “There is a kind of positive stress, an excitement. There is always a part of doubt. Will we get there? I always say, if I was sure of going all the way, I would not start because it is this part of the unknown that pleases me and pushes me to move forward.”

To be able to pursue his dreams and challenges, Armand Thoinet created his association, Les Défis d’Armand, in 2018., which allows to finance the adventures but also to raise money each year for medical research. In a little over nine years, he has been able to donate more than 63,000 euros.

In addition to the website, lesdefisdarmand.fr, all his adventures are also shared on the Instagram page @lesdefisdarmand which allows him to keep all his friends and curious people who encourage him up to date. “My adventures don’t only touch sick or disabled people, it really speaks to everyone and not everyone is sick or disabled. On the other hand, everyone has problems. If we stay stuck in our positions, life doesn’t move forward. So ultimately, my message is much broader than disability. I do my best to make it speak to everyone,” he explains.

Having successfully completed the London-Paris challenge, Armand Thoinet, who also works for the Isère department to speak in secondary schools, will be able to enjoy a well-deserved rest ahead of the Paralympic Games, before no doubt taking on a new major challenge in the near future.