Maxime Valet, Brianna Vidé and their teammates launched their marathon at the Grand Palais on Tuesday, September 3. Not a foot race, the venue is hardly suited to that, but a series of events during the Paralympic wheelchair fencing competitions, which are taking place until September 7. Competing in all three weapons, the Toulouse native will be on the pistes of the grand nave every day: she shot sabre on Tuesday and must continue on Wednesday in foil, individually then in teams the following day, and finally in épée on Friday and Saturday – team sabre is not included in the Paralympic Games.
Same program for her teammates Clémence Delavoipière and Cécile Demaude, with the exception of individual foil for the latter. With only three women selected for the Games – there were none in Tokyo, in 2021 – the management of the French team could not afford to rest one of them if they wanted the Bleues represented in all the events on the program (three fencers are needed to make a team).
The men – Ludovic Lemoine, Yohan Peter, Damien Tokatlian and Maxime Valet –, if they do not make the “grand slam” at the Grand Palais, will also be lined up on several tables. Because the fact, for both of them, of juggling between the sabre, the foil and the épée is a specificity of wheelchair fencing, which is not found at the highest level among “able-bodied” athletes. During the Olympic Games, Manon Apithy-Brunet (sabre) and Yannick Borel (épée) would only compete, individually and in teams, in their preferred weapons.
Read also | Paris 2024: understand everything about fencing, this silent art of conversation
Add to your selections
Sébastien Barrois, the French wheelchair fencing performance manager, would have liked to have one or two additional invitations to the Paris Games. Especially considering, he maintains, the size of certain delegations such as Ukraine (nine fencers), Italy (ten) or China (twelve), other strongholds of the discipline. But the two classifications of the discipline – category A (disability affecting a lower limb) and B (disability preventing mobility of the trunk) – do not allow for large numbers.
“The techniques are different”
This hyper-versatility of wheelchair fencers is not without consequences. “It takes me twice as much training, it’s still very hardexplains Maxime Valet, triple Paralympic bronze medalist. I have a foil club and a sabre club in Toulouse, it doesn’t really bother me to move from one to the other, but you have to have your bearings in each one.”
You have 54.57% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
