REPORTAGE – Reigning European champion, the French wheelchair rugby team is in full preparation for the Paris Paralympic Games. Representing one of the leading nations in this sport, Jonathan Hivernat’s Bleus are dreaming of a home title.
The state of their chairs says everything about this sport. Dented, scratched, patched, they bear the traces of the shocks suffered throughout the matches. At first glance, wheelchair rugby, a Paralympic discipline, has little in common with the game played with fifteen players on the field. At first glance only. When we attend an international match – like the France-Denmark played on Tuesday June 18 at the Palais des sports in Dijon – we realize the violence of the contacts, the solidarity between players and this tenacity necessary to surpass oneself and bringing home victory. Wheelchair rugby shares these characteristics entirely with the discipline practiced by able-bodied people. « We don’t give up », the teammates harangue among themselves like fifteen players at the end of their rope who don’t want to return to the locker room with a defeat.
Also read: Tony Estanguet-Dimitri Jozwicki: “Raising awareness with the Paralympic Games”
From August 29 to September 2, at the Arena Champ-de-Mars (Olympic name of the temporary Grand Palais), the eight best nations in the world will…
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