Forever first. As at the Tokyo 2021 Games, Marie Patouillet won the first medal for the French Paralympic delegation on Thursday 29 August in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (Yvelines). But the cyclist fared better than on the track at the Izu velodrome in Japan, where she took bronze. “In a magical atmosphere and thanks to a fabulous audience”The track runner took silver after finishing behind Dutchwoman Caroline Groot in the 500-meter time trial in C4-5, a category that brings together athletes who have suffered amputations or suffer from associated neurological disorders.
During her lap of honour, as the crowd chanted her name, Marie Patouillet, 36, wanted to remember this moment of success. She then carried her bike with her arm extended above her head. “When I have something deep inside me, I never let it go,” she declared, proud of how far she had come. “We opened the medal counter as we had planned, welcomed Laurent Thirionet, director of the French para-cycling team. Compared to the Tokyo Games, Marie has three more years of experience… She is a fighter, a training machine. She had to do it, she did it. »
However, Marie Patouillet was not destined to take up cycling. Suffering from birth from agenesis (an orthopaedic deformity of the left foot), the cyclist learned to adapt from a very young age. “When I was little, I could run around and act out of character” She explained to him World weeks before the Paralympic event. But his disability has progressed to the point where he cannot run or walk for long periods of time. “I lost my self-confidence because of the teasing, she remembers. I felt different in every way. After I turned twenty, things got even worse. »
“I fell in love” with the topic
To pursue her dream of becoming a doctor, she left her world in Versailles, in Yvelines, to enter the naval health school in Bordeaux. After ten years of study, she graduated in January 2018 but reformed: “Who would send a soldier who can no longer run or walk to a battlefield?”
The only two sports he can still practice are swimming and cycling, and it was almost by chance that he chose the latter. “I started doing it competitively when I was at the Velib’ level, she says. As a challenge, I wanted to do a stage of the Tour de France open to amateurs. Without any preparation, I reached the finish line in over nine hours, doing the whole race in the broom wagon. But I found pleasure in it! It has been a long time since sport gave me such excitement. »
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