Standing, the 15,000 spectators of Paris La Défense Arena reserve their greatest ovation by redoubling their « Ky-lian, Ky-lian » to try to comfort Kylian Portal, who is inconsolable. The 17-year-old swimmer has just finished fourth in the 100m butterfly, just four hundredths of a second away from the bronze medal. The teenager ran a perfect race, he only panicked when he hit the wall, giving one too many strokes.
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“People will say that I lack experience but I find that it’s an easy excuse, I must not miss this finish. I’m so sad to do this on the last day, I wanted to make one last podium but it will be the chocolate medal…” said, his tears barely dried, the young man, bronze medalist on August 31 in the 400m freestyle in his category (S12).
On Saturday, September 7, the French para swimming team hoped to end its Paralympic Games with a fireworks display, but the mixed 4 x 100 m freestyle relay – composed of Laurent Chardard, Agathe Pauli, Emeline Pierre and Ugo Didier – also had to settle for a place of honor that tasted like a damp squib (5e). After ten days, the counter of the blue-white-red delegation remains stuck at fourteen medals.
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France almost tripled its stake compared to the Tokyo grand mass in 2021 (five) and we have to go back to that of Athens, in 2004, to find better loot (twenty-one). Certainly, at the last World Championships, in the summer of 2023 in Manchester (United Kingdom), the tricolor clan had demonstrated its appetite (sixteen medals), but with a major difference: the absence of Russian and Belarusian swimmers, back in international pools – under a neutral banner – only since April.
Ugo Didier and Alex Portal confirm their status
By Tuesday, halfway through the competition, the Blues had already done better than in London in 2012 (eight medals including two gold). “We hope for around ten, or even a few more.”said Guillaume Domingo, the performance manager, in the run-up to the Paralympic Games on August 26. A contract more than fulfilled for the delegation of swimmers, led by its four fantastic Ugo Didier, Alex Portal, Emeline Pierre and Laurent Chardard. “The staff just told us ‘guys, it’s your Games, at home, pull your socks up’,” reports the latter, double bronze medalist in the 50m butterfly and 100m freestyle (S6).
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After his promising Tokyo Games (two medals, silver and bronze), Alex Portal was highly anticipated… at home. The engineering student in the La Défense district, a stone’s throw from the temporary Nanterre swimming pool, doubled his haul, triple Paralympic vice-champion behind the Belarusian tsar Ihar Boki in the 100m butterfly, 200m medley, and 400m freestyle – where he shared the podium with his brother Kilian – and bronze medalist in the 100m backstroke.
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