Spanish athlete Elena Congost was “devastated” after losing the bronze medal she won this Sunday in the T12 class marathon event at the Paris Paralympic Games and recalled that it had not been “for cheating but for being a person” and trying to help her guide, Mia Carol, from falling to the ground, which caused the rope that must join them by regulation to come loose.
“I’m devastated, to be honest, because I had the medal. I’m super proud of everything I’ve done and in the end they disqualify me because 10 metres from the finish line I let go of the rope for a second because a person next to me fell face first to the ground and I grabbed the rope again and we crossed the finish line,” Congost lamented after learning of the decision.
The Catalan stressed that the fourth-place finisher reached the finish line “three minutes behind” and that it was “a reflex action for any human being to hold on to a person who is next to you and is falling.” “When there is no kind of help, no kind of benefit and when it is clear that I am stopping dead,” she warned.
Congost criticised the rules. “They only say that I let go of the rope for a second and that since I let go of it, that’s it, there’s no going back and I don’t understand why anyone can reason or understand the situation, which is not about cheating and it’s not about dragging an athlete as it happened on the track,” he recalled.
“I’ve had to put up with someone who is falling. I’m left with nothing, I can’t find any explanation and it seems so unfair and really surreal. It’s sad because I also came from being without a scholarship and being in the lurch and it was one of my goals, to get a scholarship again and be in the plan and they’ve left me out of everything again when I think I’ve shown what I could do,” he said.
She therefore made it clear that she wants “everyone to know” that she has not been disqualified “for cheating, but for being a person and for an instinct that comes out when someone is falling and that is to help or support them.”
