It is unlikely that Gaël Rivière recognized the voices of his old high school or college buddies among the heated crowd that came to support the French blind football team. No matter, the man who has swapped his suit and tie for shorts and a jersey knows that they are in the stands. In recent weeks, he has received lots of messages warning him that they would come to see him play. He is participating in his third Paralympic Games after London and Tokyo.
After their initial victory against China (1-0) and then a defeat against Brazil (3-0) on Tuesday, the Blues will play their last preliminary match against Turkey on Wednesday, September 3, with a place in the semi-final at stake.
Gaël Rivière was born blind on Reunion Island thirty-four years ago. At six months, the verdict fell: he would not be able to benefit from a cornea transplant. No matter, the little boy would be educated like his sister and two brothers, two cousins that his parents adopted. “I was lucky to have parents who let me develop and didn’t overprotect me. I had a perfectly normal life for a little boy my age.” In 1998, the year of the Football World Cup in France, he was 8 years old and listened to the matches with fervor. Like many children of his generation, he was also passionate about the Japanese animated television series, Olive et Tomwhich he follows with delight.
He was far from imagining that blind football existed. Created in the 1960s, the discipline appeared in France in the mid-1980s but would not make its debut at the Paralympic Games until 2004 in Athens. No matter, the little boy loved football and wanted to play like his friends. Cleverly, he wrapped the ball in a plastic bag to hear the sound. “Football gradually became a passion. I don’t remember going more than a day without kicking a ball between the ages of 9 and 15.”he recalls.
Passion for law
At the age of 15, Gaël Rivière wanted to be independent and leave his village of Sainte-Anne (La Réunion). With his parents’ agreement, he headed for Paris. There he was, a student at the Lycée Buffon and a boarder at the National Institution for Young Blind People, where he discovered blind football. He kicked his first balls with Hakim Arezki and Martin Baron, both also in the French national team.
At the age of 16, his abilities opened the doors to the French blind football team. “At first, I just took my integration into the team as an opportunity to play even more football. The desire to win, to play sport at a high level came one or two years later, paradoxically when the first disappointments arrived”he recalls. In 2007, the team narrowly failed to qualify for the Paralympic Games in Beijing. “This type of failure forges a group and the desire not to experience this type of disappointment again”he analyzes.
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