When Dorian Foulon turns at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome, he is carried by the entire stadium. Just behind the railing of the first bend sit his coach, Christophe Dizy, and his friends from the Basque Country, where he trains. On the opposite bend, there is his family and his childhood friends, who have come in particular from La Chapelle-Caro, his village of a thousand inhabitants in Morbihan. A little further away are his medical team and all those who accompany him on a daily basis.
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On Saturday, August 31, the stands sang together The Marseillaise to congratulate the 26-year-old track cyclist, who retained his Paralympic pursuit title (4,000 m) in C5, a category intended for athletes with an amputation or severe injury to a hand or foot. For Dorian Foulon, the anthem had a special flavor. « You hear the public, you have your staff, your loved ones, he confided. To share this is a unique moment in a lifetime and to experience it today is incredible… The public responded, it was crazy.”
Born with a congenital left clubfoot equinovarus, Dorian Foulon was “a tenacious child who always wanted to be considered like the others”confides Jean-Marc Foulon, his father. “At school he was exempt from sports, but he always went.he adds. He ran like all kids and even if his legs hurt for a few days afterwards, he didn’t give a damn! » The new Paralympic champion learns to ride a bike on his own, in a bumpy field in La Chapelle-Caro.
“Dorian was an endearing, kind and always jovial child, remember Gilles and Béatrice Torcheux, a couple of close friends of his parents, also members of his fan club. He never complained.” Because of his malformation, he underwent two operations to move his foot forward: the first a few days after his birth, the second around the age of 6. The surgeon then performed an arthrodesis, a blocking of the ankle.
Some races with the able-bodied
When his father was transferred to Belle-Ile-en-Mer, still in Morbihan, Dorian Foulon took up road cycling, “in order to compete with able-bodied people while hiding his disability”, says his father. The loss of power in his left calf is estimated at 75%, that of his thigh at 35%, but that does not prevent him from winning a few events in cadets then in juniors against runners whose physical capacities are not affected.
In 2014, he met Christophe Dizy and Céline Aujard, his mental trainer. “Dorian changed my life, she says. He is a charming man and so selfless that he wins for others before doing it for himself. I only hope that today he enjoyed his magnificent title. The athlete is now training within a private structure, called OSE, a high-performance center for cycling and para-cycling which operates with its own staff, outside the federation.
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