REPORTAGE – A popular success during the Olympic Games at the beginning of August, the triathlon once again set the centre of Paris alight for its Paralympic edition this Monday.
Beautiful people on the side of the road, big smiles and even fog horns… it wasn’t exactly the air of a Monday back to school in Paris. Despite the 24-hour postponement of the paratriathlon events due to poor water quality in the Seine (we’ll come back to that), the discipline was still a big hit on Monday, September 2nd, although it wasn’t the most festive day of the year. But a month after the great popular fervor in the wake of medal winners Cassandre Beaugrand and Léo Bergère, triathlon was still celebrating in the heart of Paris.
«I got goosebumps at the end, confides Julie Marano, guide of Annouck Curzillat, fifth in the women’s PTVI race. We could have lost our nerves, it was so euphoric. We took the energy from the audience, it was incredible all those people on the side of the road.” Arriving alone in front of a crowd that was just waiting for him, Alexis Hanquinquant greeted a “totally crazy atmosphere today” after his demonstration in paratriathlon. The double gold medalist took advantage of it until the end, stretching out his final straight on the Pont Alexandre III, opposite the Invalides, where he savored every moment of his consecration at home.
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“A great nation of sport and supporters”
Celebrated by a crowd that had eyes only for him, as evidenced by the many banners and flags bearing his image, the flag bearer wore a radiant smile as he spoke of a craze that has not waned for a month, from the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games to the “Paras”: “Thank you to the French, we can be chauvinistic and grumblers, but we have proven at these Games that we are a great nation of sport and supporters, so thank you for today and the week to come.»
Animated at all four corners of the course, traced in what the center of Paris has of most beautiful, the public gave voice to this XXL session, where no less than eleven events followed one another between 8am and 2pm. A joyful public however amputated in part, the fault of the postponement from Sunday to Monday, inevitably less conducive to popular jubilation, a fortiori when it is the start of the school year, at the office as at school.There should have been even more of us, about ten more Alsatians.“, whispers a childhood friend of Michaël “Kiki” Horter, 9e among the PTS3, big smiles as soon as it was a question of raising the arms to greet the friends.
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«The only downside was seeing people who came yesterday turn back with the postponement. Many made the effort to come anyway on a Monday, it was packed with people at all the entrances. Thanks again“, continued Hanquinquant, whose children were still present in front of the Invalides, and whose absence word will therefore be easy to find. The audience was necessarily more mature, with a foreign accent too. We could hear the “USA, USA“, we saw Veronika Plebani, future Italian silver medalist, communing with her audience and even the South Korean Hwang Tae Kim, excited by his little turn of supporters, invited the whole audience to make noise, even though he doesn’t have either of his arms.
Christian Hartmann / REUTERS
The Seine is no longer a problem
The postponement will therefore not have affected the popular enthusiasm around the discipline, also proof that free sport is still popular. A postponement motivated by health reasons, the Seine being judged to be of insufficient quality on Sunday, but the page has now been turned.We’ve been pestered about the Seine for three years, it’s been made into a mountain out of a molehill and frankly it’s pissed us offconceded Cyril Viennot, silver medal-winning guide with Thibaut Rigaudeau for his last race at this level. We train and race in places that are much less clean than this. The water is clearer there than in many of the waters we practice in all year round..»
We really wanted to swim, so it doesn’t matter if we have to be sick for three days.
Cyril Viennot, guide of Thibaut Rigaudeau, silver medalist in the PTVI category
«Frankly, it would have been a shame not to swim, we are on an exceptional site. When we are on the pontoon, with the Eiffel Tower in front“, imagines his partner Thibaut Rigaudeau, stars in his eyes despite a degenerative eye disease. His guide adds: “We really wanted to swim, so it doesn’t matter if we have to be sick for three days.»
Also readParalympic Games: Thibaut Rigaudeau and Cyril Viennot take silver, a grand conclusion for the duo
«We were happy that it was a triathlon, we’re not going to hide it, adds Julie Marano. We would have been disappointed with another duathlon in Paris.“A year earlier, the Paris test event had made a cross on the swimming part because of the quality of the Seine. As in the Olympic events, this was no longer a problem. Nor was swimming against the current, a challenge specific to the mythical Parisian river. “The current is always an external element and it’s like the wind on a bicycle, we have to deal with it.continues Marano, who arrived two minutes from the podium with her partnerThe current slowed us down, we came out of the water more exhausted than usual, but it’s the same for everyone.»
A philosophy to sum up the collective thinking, while the vast majority of paratriathletes, eaten away by the effort in the Seine and then under the stifling Parisian heat, wandered around this “postcard Paris” with a smile.The athletes were very happy to have swum in the Seine and run in Parissummarizes DTN Benjamin Mazé. They all feel like they have taken part in a unique and exceptional event..»
