This will remain the last heartbreaking image of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. That of the devastating cramps of guide Mia Carol a few meters from the finish line of the T2 class marathon, Sunday at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Harnessed to the Spanish athlete Elena Congost, the guide struggles to finish the race but still manages to cross the finish line in third position for the bronze with his sidekick. A short-lived joy since the organization finally disqualified the pair by accusing the athlete of having lost contact with her guide for a few seconds when she was trying to stop him from collapsing to the ground.
“I’m going to be famous for something I never wanted”
A disqualification deemed very cruel and severe, especially since the duo did not really benefit from it. “I am devastated because I got the medal,” she lamented on Monday upon her return to Spain. “I am also super proud of everything I did, even if in the end they disqualified me because ten meters from the finish line I let go of the rope for a second because a person next to me fell face down and I went back to grab the rope before crossing the finish line.” She thus deplores that no one within the commission was able to “understand the situation”.
Asked about the Cadena Ser, his guide Mia Carol confides that he has experienced moments of “euphoria, indignation and rage”. He is now trying to turn the page. “All this happened and now we are trying to get out of this media cloud. Our mobile phones have not stopped, neither Elena’s, nor mine, nor the coach’s.”
Which doesn’t help his enormous sense of guilt for his cramps that have overcome him due to a lack of mineral salts. “It wasn’t a difficulty for me, but I miscalculated the salts I had to take, it was very windy, I wasn’t sweating and I was lacking salts. I felt like I was getting there, but there was a moment when the muscles gave out.”
“I gave the image I never wanted to give of myself,” he adds. “Now I’m going to be famous for something I never wanted, but my legs failed me. There are people who suffered when they saw me. If that cramp had happened two meters later, nothing would have happened.” Despite this, he does not harbor bitterness and remembers the work accomplished with Elena Congost.
- RMC Sport
