Among the stars of the French delegation are swimmer David Smétanine (49 years old), para-athlete Pierre Fairbank (53 years old), and tennis player Stéphane Houdet (53 years old), known for their performances… and their longevity.
“Faster, higher, stronger”goes the refrain. For the Paris Paralympic Games, which are being held until Sunday, September 8, we could add “longer”. Because among the “paras”, the retirement age of athletes is well over thirty, unlike what we see most of the time among the participants in the Olympic Games. In some cases, we could even talk about “mamilympic” and “papylympic” destinies. Thus, the record of the genre is held by the Australian shooter Libby Kosmala, who participated in the Rio Games in 2016, at the age of 74, before retiring in 2020.
The phenomenon concerns different disciplines. In 2008, Emilie Gradisek was struggling with the Slovenian volleyball team at the Beijing Games, despite her 69 years. At the same event, the Italian para-pong player Clara Podda won her first medal at the age of 57. At the time, her victim in the small final was called Isabelle Lafaye, a “youngster” of 45. “It’s certain that in our sport, we can last a very long time”notes the triple Paralympic gold medalist. “You know, in Tokyo, a Russian woman even older than me [Nadezhda Pushpasheva, 61 ans à l’époque] “got on the podium!”
Isabelle Lafaye traveled to Japan in 2021 with a nurse in her luggage to help her play matches. Especially since the level has risen over the years: “It has nothing to do with my beginnings anymore [à Atlanta, en 1996], where we all knew each other and where we knew that the podium would be played between the top 3-4 in the world. In Japan, the challenge was already to get out of the groups!”
This time she watches the Paris Games on TV. “I made a lot of sacrificesexplains the woman who retired from sport. For three decades, my life has been programmed exclusively around sport.” Table tennis also seems to be conducive to long careers in all categories: at the end of July, Luxembourg’s Ni Xia Lian took part in her sixth Olympic Games at the age of 61.
“I’m going to my sixth Games. Michael Phelps can’t say the same.”smiles David Smétanine, 49, one of the oldest members of the French delegation in Paris. The double Paralympic champion in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle in the S4 category in Beijing – he also has seven other silver and bronze medals in his collection – hammers home his motto: “Motivation, passion, ambition !”
Don’t tell him that we last in the Paralympic world because of a lack of competition. “The low-density argument was true in the 1990s. Back then, we trained four times a week, and we ended up at the Games. Today, I train 24 to 26 hours a week, not including weight training.”
The question of the captain’s age fascinates Julien Schipman, a researcher assigned to performance support at Insep. “The career of a para-athlete is actually longer than that of an athlete competing in the Olympic Games”he confirms. He differentiates between several cases: para-athletes born with their disability, those affected during childhood, “who start sports with, who often stop before the age of forty”and those whose lives change when they are already older. “For them, we can no longer talk about a career in staggered fashion.” If they have a good sports base, “their progress can be quite dazzling.”
The nature of the discipline also plays a role. Thus, the average age of world podium winners in the wheelchair marathon fluctuated between 43 and 48 years, between 1999 and 2011, men and women combined, according to the researcher’s calculations. “The age-related decline in performance is less in disciplines involving the upper limbs.”
That’s good, Pierre Fairbank is built like a mirror cabinet to propel his wheelchair ever faster. And at 53, the ten-time para-athletics medalist aims once again to get on the podium in Paris. Not in the 100 meters: “I’m lining up there to warm up, because it’s the first event of the Games.” Over 400 meters, it could do it. “But after 300 meters, I start to weaken.” No, his favorite distance has become, with age, the 800 meters. “It’s a trickster’s race, I place myself in cover, in ambush, before the sprint of the last 100 meters.” Having contracted polio (a disease caused by a virus that can lead to irreversible paralysis) before the age of 10, the New Caledonian athlete did not see himself lasting so long.
“Every time, after the Games, I say to myself: ‘I’m quitting!’ The first time was after Sydney, in 2000.”
Pierre Fairbank, para-athleteto franceinfo
A month, two months, three months of break, a little outing in a wheelchair to warm up… and the Paralympic fever takes over. This year again, it’s certain: “After the Paris Games, it’s over! Well, after that, if a manufacturer manages to make a chair under 6 kg…”
Giant leaps in equipment are indeed one of the factors in the longevity of technical discipline stars. “When I started [à la fin des années 1990]we were sitting on our armchairs, feet first, and the machine must have weighed a good 15 kgsays Pierre Fairbank. One day, a guy showed up with a model with his feet back. We laughed. But not for long. When he got his ‘performances’ up, we all changed to the same model as him.”
Technological developments take time to be understood by newcomers in different disciplines. “It takes a minimum of three to four years for a person with a leg amputee to fully master their blades.explains Julien Schipman. An Oscar Pistorius [athlète sud-africain, six fois champion paralympique, condamné à 13 ans de prison en 2017 pour le meurtre de sa compagne] could still be among the best as he excelled in the technical aspect.” At the Paris Games, German long jumper Markus Rehm, at 36, remains the big favourite in this explosive discipline, breaking world records one after the other. “The youngsters don’t have the same command of the blades as he does.”tranche Julien Schipman.
Furthermore, if the arrival of emerging Paralympic countries such as China or Brazil has forced other nations to make progress in terms of detection, this does not mean that the successors of the champions are jostling at the door, much less young talent. In France, the La Relève program was launched in 2019 to identify potential players who have passed through the club network. “We were immediately approached by thirty-somethingssays Jean Minier, sports director at the French Paralympic and Sports Committee. Of the 300 candidates oriented during the first four years of the program, 15 are present at the Paris Games. “We target all audiences, he assures, But among women, there is less competition at the moment.”
Sylvie Ruth Morel, a Canadian para-fencer in her sixties, was of the same opinion in 2021: “I was alone for the last twenty years. Others come and go, no one stays in the program, she lamented on the CBC channel. It’s too expensive, unless we are subsidized. [par les services gouvernementaux].” In some disaster-stricken disciplines, an athlete can even go from beginner to Paralympic champion in five years, like the Japanese Keiko Sugiura, double gold medalist in paracycling in Tokyo at the age of 50. She did triathlon as a hobby before the accident which, in 2016, left her disabled.
The fact remains that year after year, the average age of participants in the Paralympic Games is falling inexorably, assures Jean Minier. Even among the French, while the document (PDF) describing the national sport-disability strategy (2020-2024) of the ministry stressed four years ago that “the average age of the medalists and the French delegation remains[e] superior to countries remaining in the top 10 nations”. What will happen after the Paris Games? “No one will ever have a career like mine in swimming again.. “Really, it will no longer be possible”assures para-swimmer David Smétanine.
