JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP
Alex (left) and Kylian (right) Portal, silver and bronze medalists during the Paralympic swimming 400m freestyle S13 final, at Paris La Défense Arena, on August 31, 2024.
PARALYMPIC GAMES – Les Bleus are on the right track. After almost four days of competition at the Paris Paralympic Games, the French team was ranked fifth in the Nations rankings on Sunday, September 1 (at 9 p.m.), with 6 gold medals, 9 silver medals and 10 bronze medals.
Speaking to LCI on August 27, the resigning Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra had set an ambitious course for the French delegation: to integrate the « Top 8 » and win around twenty gold medals.
Paris 2024
The medal table for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games this Sunday, September 1 at 9 p.m.
The Blues therefore still have just over seven days of competition to achieve this objective, three years after the disappointing Tokyo Paralympic Games during which they brought home 54 medals, for only 11 titles.
However, it will be almost impossible for the French team to match the record from Sydney 2000, the best so far in the 21st century for the Blues: 86 medals, including 30 gold and a seventh place in the final ranking.
The best final ranking obtained in Barcelona in 1992
And this is still not without comparison with the results of the 80s. In 1984, France had thus brought back… 186 medals, including 71 gold for a final sixth place. But at the time, a total of 903 events had been contested (against “only” 549 in Paris this summer) during “double” Games in New York and Stoke Mandeville, recalls The Team.
Despite everything, it was in 1992 in Barcelona that the Blues achieved their best final ranking (fourth), after having obtained 106 medals, including 36 gold.
No absolute medal record is therefore expected for the French Paralympic delegation, unlike the Olympic delegation, which, a month ago, won 64 medals, including 16 gold, reaching the Top 5. Unprecedented at these two levels until now (excluding the results of the special Olympic Games of 1900).
For the rest of this year’s medal table – that established by Paris 2024 East see above -, this one is already outrageously dominated by China, ahead of Great Britain and Brazil. If the Chinese delegation had brought back “only” 73 medals from Tokyo in 2021, it had dominated the debates in Rio in 2026 with… 239 medals, including 107 gold. Note that the United Kingdom remains a very regular subscriber to the top 3 during the Paralympics.
Also see on Le HuffPost :
Reading this content may result in the deposit of cookies by the third-party operator who hosts it. Given the choices you have expressed regarding the deposit of cookies, we have blocked the display of this content. If you wish to access it, you must accept the “Third-party content” cookie category by clicking on the button below.
Play Video