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64 medals at the Olympic Games, including 16 gold. After an unforgettable edition of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games will open this Wednesday evening. But what are the chances of the French Paralympic Team? Three years ago, at the Tokyo Games, the athletes finished in 14th place in the final table with 54 medals, including eleven gold.
To make a leap in the nations rankings, France wants to double its number of gold medals, explains Grégory Saint-Géniès, national technical director of the French Paralympic Sports Federation. “We have put everything in place to be at the top eight. To get into the top eight, it’s more than 20 gold medals. All our athletes know that we are behind them and we can have great ambitions and be at the top of these Games,” he emphasizes on Europe 1.
Opportunities in para swimming, para judo, table tennis…
As for the French athletes who will make us dream during this Paralympic fortnight, the Léon Marchand of the Paralympic Games could be Alex Portal. He is also 22 years old and has the face of an angel with blond hair. Like the four-time Olympic champion, Alex Portal moves at the speed of a torpedo in the pools. Visually impaired since birth, the disabled swimmer won three world championship titles last summer.
The Teddy Riner of para judo is called Cyril Jonard: at 48, the visually impaired and deaf man from Limoges holds ten world titles. In table tennis, Léa Ferney is a bit like the Félix Lebrun of the Paralympic women’s category, silver medalist in Tokyo in the intellectually disabled category, the world champion dreams of the Marseillaise in Paris.
Finally, the flag bearer Alexis Hanquinquant, six-time para triathlon world champion who lost his right leg, will swim in the Seine in a few days next Sunday and is aiming, as in Rio, for the gold medal.
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