the “obstacle course” for young athletes with disabilities to be accepted into a club

Only 1.4% of sports clubs in France can accommodate people with disabilities. While the Paralympic Games can help to change things, families of young athletes are having difficulty getting them into a club.

According to the French Paralympic and Sports Committee (CPSF), only 1.4% of sports clubs in France currently say they are able to accommodate people with disabilities. Can the Paralympic Games make a difference? One thing is certain, whatever the disability, the desire for sport is there.

On the doorstep, in the corridor of a building in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, an archery demonstration is taking place. But without the arrows. With Magalie, the mother, and Morgane, 20, who suffers from Joubert syndrome, a rare genetic disease that can cause coordination and cognitive disorders. This does not prevent her from dancing, horse riding, but also from practicing archery for two years in a club in the capital. The Trois Lys club welcomes five people with disabilities. Morgane never lets go of her bow. “It relaxes me, it gives me confidence to be with others, friends who are nice”, she says.

What does she think about the Paralympic Games? “It’s hard when you’re disabled, they’re brave” these athletes, Morgane adds. She wishes she could be as brave. For Magalie, seeing her daughter with this bow in her hands is “a certain pride, because it shows one’s evolution, archery requires concentration, surpassing oneself.”

“Life is already an obstacle course for them. Leisure, pleasure, these are things that are essential for balance.”

Magalie, Morgane’s mother

to franceinfo

It took Magalie two to three years to find clubs willing to take her daughter, often by word of mouth, making numerous phone calls here and there. “It was a matter of making do. At some point, most parents of disabled people give up.”she laments.

At Club France, in the Parc de la Villette in Paris, franceinfo was able to attend a para-climbing session. With encouragement for Ashanty, 15, who lives with cerebral palsy. On site, she is surrounded by her friends, her educators from an institute in Bondy, in Seine-Saint-Denis. “We are always very moved to see them accomplish something like that”says one of them. The teenager is testing an innovative device, an electrically assisted winch that accompanies her movements and allows people with disabilities, like her, to climb.

Ashanty never thought she would ever go rock climbing. “Basically, I really like sport, that’s why I’m happy to have done this outing, she rejoices. We also have our rights and we can play sports like everyone else.” Finding a club remains difficult. “My mother and I ask everywhere, but it’s hard. We’re told that it’s not possible for electric wheelchairs, that a disabled child is harder to take care of than a normal child.”

But faced with this reality, the French Paralympic and Sports Committee wants to mobilize with, since the end of 2022, the “inclusive clubs”. This is a program led by the CPSF and supported by the State, which aims to train free of charge the managers and supervisors of sports clubs to welcome people with disabilities. The objective is to reach 3,000 inclusive clubs by the end of 2024.

“Currently, we have 1,500 clubs involved in the program, recalls Sylvain Sabatier, director of territories within the French Paralympic and Sports Committee. We still have time to get to 3,000. It remains a challenge.” Especially since there are 160,000 sports clubs in France. “But at the same time, it’s 3,000 more clubs and it’s necessary because there are too few clubs that declare themselves capable of welcoming people with disabilities.”

The Paralympic Games can “to arouse desire, adds Sylvain Sabatier. There are people with disabilities who sometimes censor themselves, they will say to themselves: there is perhaps a club that can accommodate me. Now, it is up to us, collectively, to find solutions to neutralize this complexity of access to practice.”

The road is still long, but it is perhaps on a climbing wall at Club France with an Ashanty at the top that it begins “the inclusion revolution”the one ardently desired by Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympic Committee, during the opening ceremony.