Standing, the 15,000 spectators at the Paris La Défense Arena gave their biggest ovation, increasing their “Ky-lian, Ky-lian” to try to console the inconsolable Kylian Portal. The 17-year-old swimmer has just failed to finish fourth in the 100m butterfly, just four-hundredths of a second away from the bronze medal. The teenager ran the perfect race, only panicking when he hit the wall, throwing his arm out too hard.
“People will say that I lack experience, but I think that is an easy excuse, I must not miss this goal. I am very sad to do this on the last day, I wanted to make one last podium but it will be the chocolate medal…” The young man, who won the bronze medal in the 400m freestyle in his category (S12) on 31 August, said as his tears dried.
On Saturday 7 September, the French para-swimming team was hoping to close its Paralympic Games with fireworks, but the mixed 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, made up of Laurent Chardard, Agathe Pauli, Emeline Pierre and Ugo Didier, must also settle for a place of honour with a taste of damp firecracker (5my). After ten days, the blue-white-red delegation’s counter finally stagnates at fourteen medals.
France is almost doubling its stakes compared to the Tokyo crowd in 2021 (five) and we have to go back to Athens in 2004 to find a better haul (twenty-one). Certainly, at the last World Cup, in the summer of 2023 in Manchester (United Kingdom), the tricolor clan had demonstrated its appetite (sixteen medals), but with a significant difference: the absence of Russian and Belarusian swimmers, back in international pools – under a neutral flag – only since April.
Ugo Didier and Alex Portal confirm their status
By Tuesday, halfway through the competition, Les Bleus had already achieved better results than in London 2012 (eight medals, two of them gold). “We expect about ten, or even a little more”“This is the first time that the Paralympic Games have been held in the Olympics,” said Guillaume Domingo, director of performance, in the run-up to the Paralympic Games on 26 August. The contract has been more than fulfilled for the swimming delegation, led by its fantastic four: Ugo Didier, Alex Portal, Emeline Pierre and Laurent Chardard. “The staff just told us ‘guys, these are your Games, at home, go away’,” reports the latter, a double bronze medalist in the 50m butterfly and 100m freestyle (S6).
After his promising Tokyo Games (two medals, silver and bronze), Alex Portal was eagerly awaited… at home. The student at the engineering school in the La Défense district, a stone’s throw from the temporary swimming pool in Nanterre, doubled his haul, finishing three times runner-up to the Belarusian Tsar Ihar Boki in the 100m butterfly, 200m medley and 400m freestyle, where he shared the podium with his brother Kilian, a bronze medallist in the 100m backstroke.
You have 53.35% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
