The capital of the oval is once again that of the water lines, chlorinated and perhaps a little blessed. In the 1940s and 1950s, French swimming worked miracles in Toulouse, birthplace of Alex Jany and Jean Boiteux, and base of operations of Alfred Nakache and Georges Vallerey. Since then, the Pink City has given birth to Léon Marchand, recent four-time Olympic champion. In the pool of Paris La Défense Arena, he has another ambassador: Ugo Didier, who won Paralympic gold on Thursday 29 August in the 400m freestyle.
The athlete swims between the Cercle des nageurs de Cugnaux, south-west of Toulouse – of which he has been a member since he was nine – and the Dauphins du TOEC, the club of Léon Marchand and his glorious elders, on the banks of the Garonne River. Although the two 22-year-old swimmers have never evolved in the same group, they rubbed shoulders two years before the French swimming phenomenon crossed the Atlantic to join coach Bob Bowman. “If he’s not inspiring, I wonder who is… He’s a guy who is super strong in my weak points”Ugo Didier observes, while carrying out a diagnosis in a white coat.
The young man has long been accustomed to the rigour of medical glossary. He was born on 11 September 2001 without calves, with club feet (turned inwards), bent knees (hyperextended) and atrophied lower muscles. So many weaknesses from the blows, the covering and of course the pushes and the pourings from the wall, as he judges. “monumental” by Leon Marchand. “You want to do the same thing every day in training, but technically it’s impossible for me, so I work on it as best I can”says the man who took his first steps in the water at the age of 7.
the pain fades away
The boy cannot walk or stand for long periods of time. He cannot jump, let alone run, and his legs constantly feel like they are going to break. He still wants to play sports. “There was a swimming club not far from my house, that pushed me a little towards this sport by default”He says. From the beginning he mixed with healthy people; this is still the case today. “I am lucky to have a mild disability”, He justifies this, while regretting that some of his French teammates with more serious pathologies cannot do the same due to the lack of a suitable environment.
In it aquatic environment, where pain fades away, does not immediately assume to uncover this Deformed body, with matches instead of legs. “Swimming first helped me realize that I had a disability, because you can’t hide it in a swimsuit. Swimming with able-bodied people helped me accept it. And trying to find solutions to try to swim as fast as them eventually helped me overcome it.”, develops the civil engineering student at the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Toulouse.
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