Millavois Elie de Carvalho was entered this Wednesday, September 4, in the time trial of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
The performance of Elie de Carvalho from Millau is a capital one. A dream for this cycling enthusiast to get on the podium of the Games, at home, in the time trial event. “It’s an incredible medal at the Games, we dreamed of it a few months ago, now we’re doing it…”, the cyclist from Millau underlined on France Télévisions. There is a bit of disappointment, we thought about the gold medal until the end. Friday (September 6, Editor’s note) it will be gold or nothing! When we started a year ago we would have signed, we are happy, we think about Friday and we hope for the gold medal.”
The duo with Mickaël Guichard immediately set the pace for the race and the intermediate times were quick to confirm this. The French tandem put together all the ingredients to take the lead at the halfway point with… 27 seconds ahead of the Briton Stephen Bate, who was in the lead at the time! Only the Dutch crew, pushed by Tristan Bangma, the reigning world champion, did better than the Millavois at the same stage. The lead was less comfortable (2”8).
A strong second half of the race
The title was therefore still a possibility when the Oranje passed the halfway point. And the French, largely supported on the course, marked out in Clichy-sous-Bois, continued to work tirelessly to stay ahead and tease the Dutch in this long-distance match. Only these two crews could claim the title given the intermediate passage times. They crossed the finish line with a 53”37 lead over the British. All that remained was to wait to find out the colour of the metal. The Dutch finally had a better end to the race to take the title from the French. Elie de Carvalho therefore takes a very nice silver medal for his first Paralympic Games.
On Friday, the Millavois will once again put on his tricolor shorts to take part in the road race. The start will be at 1 p.m.
