The Frenchman, mutilated following a shark attack in 2017, won his first Paralympic medal this Tuesday at La Défense, with bronze in the 50m butterfly (S6).
Laurent Chardard wanted to make the pleasure last. Like all Olympic and Paralympic medallists, the joy of a medal surpasses everything. So the colour doesn’t matter, especially when you win your first at home, as the French para-swimmer did, winning bronze in the 50m butterfly in the S6 category.
«I wanted to bring this medal home, no matter which one it was, and I did it, the objective was achieved.“, rejoiced the 29-year-old para-swimmer, third in a race where his rivals, identified from the start, beat him by less than half a second. Exactly 41 hundredths behind the Chinese Jingang Wang, 12 hundredths behind the Colombian Nelson Crispin Corzo.
But the main thing was elsewhere for Chardard, victim of a serious shark attack off the coast of Reunion, his native island, in 2017. While surfing, the para-swimmer escaped the worst and came out mutilated on the right side, no more arms or legs. The former surfer quickly chose swimming and rebuilt himself not on but in the water, failing just off the podium in Tokyo (4th).It’s a big relief for me because I had a lot of pressure to do better than in Tokyo where we had the worst place, the one we don’t like. Now it’s a great pride to get on the box.”greeted the second French medalist of the day in paraswimming after Ugo Didier, silver in the 100m backstroke in the S9 category.
Also readParalympic Games: Ugo Didier wins silver in the 100m backstroke, his second personal medal
«Ugo is in second place just before, that’s bound to make you hungry.”admitted the person concerned when smiling at the images of the podium of his partner, now a double Paralympic medalist. World and European champion in the 50m butterfly, Chardard had hoped for better than bronze, he repeated, but his joy seemed quite honest as the minutes passed once he got out of the water, where he was first warmly congratulated by his tormentor, the Chinese Jingang Wang.
“The audience was magical”
Out of the water, he gave his wife and daughter a long hug, before continuing the fun with a crowd all behind him, where the tricolour flags handed out before the race continued to wave joyously around the La Défense basin.The crowd was magical, all that noise was great for us.he said in the heat of the moment. When you enter the arena and you hear your name shouted like that… it’s huge.»
«I thought of all those audiences, my friends and my family, he continued. I didn’t want to disappoint all those people or myself, I trained for three years for this.» He will still have the opportunity to taste the joys of Paris La Défense Arena, in two days, with the 100 m freestyle of this same S6 category. Not without a certain ambition: “It was huge, and it just makes you want to do even better.”.
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