Parasport was in the spotlight on Saturday, October 8, place de la Bastille. A little less than two years from the start of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, hundreds of French champions came to meet the public to talk about their journeys, and inform about physical and sporting practice for people with disabilities. disability.
Driving force in the creation of the event, the president of the French Paralympic and Sports Committee (CPSF) – and nine-time Paralympic medalist – Marie-Amélie Le Fur returns for franceinfo: sport to the objectives of this symbolic day in more ways than one.
franceinfo: sport: what does this first Paralympic day in France represent as an athlete, firstly, but also as president of the CPSF?
Marie-Amelie Le Fur: Already, it was a very long time of reflection upstream. Do we have to do a Paralympic day? What is its use? How do we place it in relation to other already existing events such as Olympic and Paralympic Week, Olympic Day on June 23? And it is clear that we needed to create more links with the general public, to really focus on the specificities of parasport. What was missing was to make the performance understood. This is really the objective of this day, it has been months of reflection, of work for the teams and there, we want to allow the general public to learn about practices, to meet top athletes and to measure how there is a strong commitment and a very high level of performance achieved by Paralympic athletes.
Let’s go for the Paralympic day at Place de la Bastille. Initiations to several disciplines, meetings with athletes, events… Parasport celebrated before the Paralympic Games in #Paris2024to follow on @francetvsport and @franceinfo pic.twitter.com/VvdCvCtagw
— Clement Mariotti Pons (@PonsClement) October 8, 2022
We now have a united French team of Olympic and Paralympic athletes, one and the same emblem… Is this day part of the same message of unity, and will it be repeated?
The objective of this day is really to register it in the long term, that it can be a legacy of the Games and that it can register in a second time on the territories. This year, we are in Paris with the support of the State, the City, the Organizing Committee, the CPSF, partners… But tomorrow, the Games must also irrigate the whole territory. Where this day embodies this unified French team is when we talk about 160 Olympic and Paralympic athletes present today. The general public will come around the Paralympic sports, meet who our athletes are, our delegation who will compete in 2024.
Damien Seguin, flag bearer of France at the 2012 Paralympic Games, judged for franceinfo: sport that the evolution of the media coverage of parasport was close to that of women’s sport. Does this Paralympic day also contribute to this increased knowledge of our champions?
It’s true that when we look at everything that has been put in place to promote, promote women’s access to sport and better publicize it, we take the same path. We need to increase media coverage. We may have a specific issue because we still have rules, sports that are specific to the Paralympic movement. Here too, we need to ensure that the French, the whole world, better understand athletes and their disciplines, and we know that by meeting champions, by being able to identify with role models, we want more get involved in the movement.
@FlorentManaudou : “It’s the first Paralympic day in France, it was important to be there!” #ParalympicDay
Bastille’s Place pic.twitter.com/D4TvdaWuPc
— francetvsport (@francetvsport) October 8, 2022
Can this day also be the starting point of a great Paralympic adventure for the participants, especially the youngest? Can it create vocations?
Will it create champion vocations, I don’t know, but we’ll take it! Where this day is important is also to meet our public, or in any case that our public, that people with disabilities, come to meet us, to meet sport around this sporting, festive and cultural events. We have made this site fully accessible, in the practice areas, in the educational areas so that people with disabilities can immerse themselves in this movement and understand that Paralympic sport is also for them. This is also why on the Place de la Bastille, an area is dedicated to the federations so that people can get information. There is also an objective to have a transformation into parasport licensing.
It is sometimes mentioned that almost one out of two people with disabilities do little or no physical activity or sport. Is this the main message of this day?
The statistics of practices of people with disabilities are difficult to obtain but yes, the practice remains marginal, clearly. So we need to work on that, and the Paralympic Games in Paris are an extraordinary opportunity for us. And I think that the CPSF has taken the measure of this issue. We want to equip the federations, support them as well as possible so that the club opens up to people with disabilities. But there is also a need for the user, for it to become obvious, for it to become readable. We also have tools that are intended for users such as “Find your parasport”, the handicap guide launched by the Ministry of Sports… And the third aspect on the field of the development of the practice is the question of public policies . At some point, if sports policies are not in favor of the practice of people with disabilities, we will not be able to move forward. We also know that the last essential target is to have a successful French team in 2024 because if it shines, if it wins medals, it will be relayed in the media. It is a question of role model sent to the whole of society.