Claire Supiot-Garçon is the first French athlete to have participated in the Olympic Games and, 33 years later, in the Paralympic Games in the same discipline, swimming. The Angevin swimmer, who is fighting Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, is now aiming to qualify for the 2024 Paris Games.
“My roommate“. This is what Claire Supiot-Garçon calls her disease: Charcot-Marie-Tooth, a progressive and degenerative neurological pathology. It affects the nerves which control muscular movements and those which convey sensory information to the brain.
On a daily basis, Claire explains, for example, that she “can’t walk without his splints or open a jar of jam. And when I swim, I don’t have any push when starting or turning. I have to deal with my roommate. He is sometimes more present and does not go on weekends, which will cause greater discomfort and fatigue.“.
To live better with her roommate, Claire “learned to know it and no longer be angry about symptoms that annoyed me“.
Claire has always swum. After a sports-studies course in Dinard, she joined the French swimming team in the 1980s.
Nine times French champion in the 100m and 200m butterfly, she participated in the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988. The disease, genetic, was already underlying. But it was only twenty years later, in 2008, that she was able to put a name to it.
33 years later, at the Tokyo 2021 Paralympic Games, she became the first French swimmer to have participated in the Olympic and Paralympic Games with a final in the 100m butterfly.
Claure Supiot at the Tokyo Paralympic Games • © G.MIRAND/CPSF/FFH
Like a fish to water, Claire is now aiming to qualify for the Paris 2024 Games. She will then be 56 years old. Unstoppable.
“You have to allow yourself to dream, set goals and make it happen. This is the most interesting way to get there..”
Every morning, before going to work, Claire goes to AquaVita and the Jean Bouin swimming pool, in Angers, to do her laps. Eight weekly sessions in the water plus pilates and physical preparation sessions.
Intense training for the Paris 2024 objective • © Théo BARILLER-KRINE
All under the keen and caring eye of his trainer, Marc, who is none other than his brother, also affected by the disease. “For me, he is the best, because he has this knowledge of pathology in addition to his skills as a trainer“.
Claire can also count on an entire medical team and on her husband, Frédéric, with the support of her children and her granddaughter. “It’s important to be well surrounded. We can’t do everything alone.”
This surpassing of oneself, this desire to pursue one’s dreams, Claire Supiot-Garçon transmits it through her role as disability representative for the department of Maine-et-Loire for five years. “I support workers with disabilities, I guide them. I also raise awareness“.
Claire Supiot, a committed swimmer • © Théo BARILLER-KRINE
And there is no doubt that the swimmer knows how to put words to evils. A champion at every level.
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