On June 13, for the first time in his life, Dimitri Jozwicki ran a 100m in less than eleven seconds at the disabled sports meeting at the Charléty stadium in Paris, breaking a barrier that is equivalent to that of ten seconds for able-bodied people. With this time of 10.99 seconds, he became the fifth man in his disability category (T38, for athletes with cerebral palsy) to achieve this feat. On Saturday, August 31, the 27-year-old sprinter will be one of the contenders for the podium at the Paralympic Games, on the track at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis).
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers The World Para Athletics Championships, the breeding ground for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, want to attract crowds
Add to your selections
The handicap of Dimitri Jozwicki and his competitors combines almost everything that complicates the life of a sprinter, for whom relaxation and frequency of movements are crucial. “I will be limited in my joint range of motion, I have some coordination issues, I suffer from spasticity, which involuntarily contracts my muscles. I tense up easily and tire my muscles more quickly.”he states.
In Tokyo, the French athlete took 4th placee place in the final, in 11.52 seconds. At the 2023 World Championships, he finished 5thein 11.19 seconds. After his first time at the Games in 2021, the Lorraine native was hoping to reach eleven seconds to be champion three years later in Paris. “There will be six or seven of us capable of achieving this time of eleven seconds or better and hoping for a podium.”he believes.
Inspired by Christophe Lemaitre
While Dimitri Jozwicki continues to improve, the level of his opponents also continues to increase. American Jaydin Blackwell, for example, set a world record of 10.72 seconds. “We are capable, disability is not an end in itselfhe says. I will never run the 100m as fast as Usain Bolt [9 s 58]but that’s the case for 99.9% of people, maybe even Noah Lyles. [champion olympique 2024]. »
It was another sprinter, recently retired, who sparked the athletic vocation of Dimitri Jozwicki and his twin brother Rémi, born without a disability. In 2010, Christophe Lemaitre achieved a hat-trick at the European Championships in Barcelona. “It inspired ushe remembers. We had speed qualities. In rugby, we played wingers. The 100m was imposed on us.
The teenager was 14 when he started athletics in an able-bodied environment. He only discovered disabled sport in 2016, unaware that it was his place: “I didn’t know the classification system [selon les handicaps]. No one had guided me until my coach, Julien Reb, mentioned it to me during a conversation. And yet I was an occupational therapy student.
You have 42.12% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
