The two athletes, each 22 years old, both engineering students, should shine in the Paralympic pools of Paris 2024, and could bring back trinkets as early as this Thursday, August 29, to the French delegation.
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Two medals starting this Thursday, August 29 in the afternoon? The French para-swimming team can claim them, with the entry into the competition of Ugo Didier and Alex Portal, who have in common their age, 22 years old, their engineering studies, their Harry Potter looks, and records that position them as potential crowned in their respective categories. Born with club feet, atrophied muscles and no calves, Ugo Didier from Toulouse, licensed with the Cercle des nageurs de Cugnaux (Haute-Garonne) officiates in the S9 category, that of the least severe physical disabilities. He details: “I can’t walk and stand for long periods of time, I can’t run, I can’t jump, I can’t do any hard work, I can’t play football. In fact, my legs always feel like they’re going to break. So if I wanted to do sports, I had swimming.”
His trainer Samuel Chaillou deciphers the equation in the team : “Ugo has no leg strength. He has to compensate for his lack of knee stability with something else. Due to muscle atrophy and locked ankles, he can’t push completely in the turns. It also gets in the way on the battements, with one foot offering more resistance to the forward movement… We have to find legs that allow him to balance himself, if possible to move forward, but above all not to brake.”
Body Alignments
Ugo Didier started by swimming with the able-bodied. “At the time, I didn’t know what disabled sport was. When I found out, thanks to a friend from summer camp, I thought it was only for amputees and wheelchairs,” he remembers. He joined a para-swimming club at the age of 14. From then on, his trajectory was like a rocket: at 16, he won his first world championship title in the 100 m backstroke, his favourite stroke, and then went on to obtain a bachelor’s degree (in science) with honours. Four years later, he brought home two medals from the Tokyo Games, silver in the 400 m freestyle and bronze in the 200 m medley.
Added to this is consistency: in the meantime, Ugo Didier has shone at the European Championships in Dublin, at the World Championships in London, and will do it again at those in Funchal (Portugal) and Manchester in 2022 and 2023 (eight silver medals and one bronze). Last April in Funchal, the civil engineering student at the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Toulouse enriched this gleaming mattress with five trinkets, three gold and two silver.
Over the last two years, in view of Paris, the one who aspires to set world records has focused on two particularly decisive aspects when the legs fail: body alignments, in particular the positioning of the head, and the support of the hand in the water. His main opponent is Milan’s Simone Barlaam. It should be noted that his brother, Lucas Didier, 21, who suffers from the same pathology, is also part of the French delegation, in table tennis: he enters the competition this same Thursday, in mixed doubles.
Unparalleled glide
Sport is also a story of siblings for Alex Portal, this time experienced entirely in the same waters. The two brothers suffer from ocular albinism, a congenital disease that prevents them from seeing clearly more than a meter and which causes photophobia. Alex Portal swims in the S13 category, dedicated to people with the least severe visual impairments, and his younger brother Kylian (17 years old) between S12 and S13. The Portal brothers from Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Yvelines) could even face each other in the 400 m freestyle. But an Abel and Cain scenario is unlikely. Interviews show them to be accomplices, and on Instagram, the pair appear back to back and all smiles. No, the presence of the duo in the same selection “is not a difficult situation to manage, says Guillaume Domingo, performance manager, because they get along very well.”
Asked about the prospect of having two sons in competition, their mother Virginie responded to the media site Actu 78: “That doubles the stress, let’s say. […] I’m so happy for them that they both qualified. And also, that they have the opportunity to race together. I’m both excited, because it’s getting closer, and inevitably a little anxious, because I want it to go well for them. It’s a lot of mixed emotions. So we hope they have good results.”
The eldest, described as gifted, with an outstanding glide detected very early, starts with an advantage in view of the prize list: a specialist in the butterfly and crawl, Alex already has two Olympic medals (silver and bronze), won in Tokyo in 2021, four world titles in 2023, a host of silver and bronze medals at world or European level. The young shoot Kylian can boast 4 medals including 2 gold at the European Youth Games, and the bronze won in the 400m freestyle at the 2023 world championships… two steps below Alex. In Paris, in addition to this discipline, Alex (who is also continuing his studies at the Ecole supérieure d’ingénieurs Léonard-de-Vinci, in Courbevoie) will also swim the 50m freestyle, the 100m butterfly, and the 200m medley. When Kylian will line up for his part in the 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly.
