On August 8, the finalists of the women’s Olympic long jump competition benefited from the support of a select spectator in the stands of the Stade de France. Fleur Jong had driven to Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) from Amsterdam, where she lives, to attend an event she wouldn’t have missed for anything in the world.
The reason is that the 28-year-old Dutchwoman is the reigning Paralympic champion in the event, in the T64 category (intended for athletes with a deficiency in the lower part of a leg, or the absence of one or both legs, below the knee). On Saturday, August 31, the young woman, who has had both legs amputated and is fitted with prostheses, will defend her crown, before attempting a double with the 100m, on September 6.
In her home country, Fleur Jong is a public figure. She was one of the flag bearers for the Dutch delegation at the Tokyo Paralympic Games in the summer of 2021. She was also one of the few para athletes to share the stage with able-bodied athletes at a Diamond League meeting on 8 September 2023 in Brussels. That day, the jumper broke the world record for the long jump in her original classification (T62), with a mark of 6.74 metres, finishing second behind Ivana Spanovic, the 2022 indoor world champion and Olympic bronze medallist at Rio 2016.
“Pushing the limits”
Fleur Jong had contacted the promoters of the event herself. “They were super open and helpful.she tells the Monde. It was important to jump with these athletes, to show the public and the organizers that it is possible, sometimes, to combine disabled sport and able-bodied sport.” On this occasion, she became friends with Ivana Spanovic and remembers this sentence from Goran Obradovic, the Serbian’s coach: “Is this how you jump with prosthetics? It’s not that different.”
However, there is no question of claiming a place at the Olympic Games (OG), as the German Markus Rehm, triple Paralympic long jump champion, was able to do in the past – a request rejected for the Rio Olympic Games. “We have our World Paralympic Championships and our Paralympic Games, which I am proud of.Fleur Jong explains. But you can use commercial competitions like the Diamond League as a media platform.”
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Paralympic athletes are “a parallel” Olympic athletes, “this is the meaning of para”she insists. “It’s not about disability, it’s about pushing the boundaries. The Olympics and the Paralympics can coexist, we don’t need to compete together.” She is nevertheless campaigning for greater inclusion in national championships, where, she says, “a 100m disabled final could follow a 100m able-bodied final.”
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