Blue caps decorated with the number 61, in reference to the department of Orne, on their heads, large Norman flags bearing two golden felines on a red background, the joyful group is hard to miss in the arrivals hall of Montparnasse station, in Paris, Tuesday, September 3. Twenty-seven CM1 and CM2 students accompanied by six members of the teaching team of the Notre-Dame Saint-Louis school in Briouze are visiting the capital to attend the Paralympic Games blind football tournament, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.
And they are not the only ones. During this back-to-school week, the stands of the competition sites were filled with schoolchildren from all over France. More than 190,000 tickets were distributed by the State to classes ranging from CM1 to Terminale as part of the Ma classe aux Jeux program. “It’s the biggest school trip ever.”says Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, the resigning sports minister.
At the Montparnasse train station, as soon as they enter the metro, the Norman group is greeted by a wave of RATP agents, wearing purple vests. During the previous school year, these children worked on the Olympic Games and were made aware of the issue of disability. They also met table tennis player Emeric Martin, who was the captain of the French delegation in Beijing in 2008. “It’s an important educational message: you can turn your disability into a strength.”insists Aline Letertre, director of the establishment which received the Génération 2024 label. Attend a Paralympic event in the heart of Paris, “It’s a great ending”she believes.
Wake up at 4:30 am
For many students, this outing is also their very first visit to the capital. In front of the Eiffel Tower, shrouded in mist on this gray and rainy day, one of the students exclaims, amazed: “It touches the clouds, it’s like Mont Saint-Michel.” And the opportunity to play the tourist doesn’t stop there: after the morning blind football session, the group walks several emblematic streets of the capital to the Tuileries gardens, where they have booked tickets to admire the cauldron. Before turning back to the station at the end of the day. Although they benefited from reduced rates from SNCF and Ile-de-France Mobilités for the trip, meals and accommodation were not covered.
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To avoid paying for a night in Paris, a group of Corsicans who also came to the blind football session even made the round trip by plane during the day. “Financially, it was not possible” to stay for several days, explains Nathalie Vitali, a physical education and sports teacher at the Baleone college in Sarrola-Carcopino, near Ajaccio, who accompanies the thirty students “the most deserving of the establishment’s sports association”. The early morning wake-up call – at 4:30 a.m. all the same – “was worth it”assures Elouane, 12. The teenager, who plays volleyball, shares her joy at finding herself on the site of the competitions that she followed on television during the Olympic Games.
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