With an average age of over 33 and some of the oldest members aged 59: the French delegation to the Paralympic Games is evidence of later and generally longer sporting careers among para athletes, despite a desire to rejuvenate.
By Mona Guichard
From table tennis to sitting volleyball to the Stade de France track, para athletes over the age of 40 are not uncommon in competing at the Paralympic Games…
Olympic athletes much younger
“There is the pleasure of progressing, of seeing the equipment evolve, the way of training differently, that’s what still motivates me to be here”, Pierre Fairbank points out about his remarkably long career. At 53, the Caledonian para athlete is taking part in his seventh and final Games in Paris. With an average age of over 33, the delegation of 237 French para athletes far outclasses that of the Olympic events: at 26.9 years old, the latter was on average six years younger. This difference is primarily due to the disability itself.
Many disabilities “acquired”
“There are people who have an innate physical or visual disability, but there are many people who have an acquired disability,” explains to theAFP Christophe Carayon, deputy national technical director of the French Paralympic Sports Federation. Like Guylaine Marchand, 55, in rowing, Hakim Arezki, 41, in blind football, or Loïc Vergnaud, 45, in para cycling, many have developed a disability in adulthood.
Rebuilding your body after an accident
“People arrive with a body that has been damaged and needs to be rebuilt,” continues Christophe Carayon, who also mentions “trust” to develop with regard to the equipment and prostheses needed in sport or daily life. It dismisses the role of equipment in the longevity of careers. “The prosthesis will not evolve according to your decline in physical capacity, it’s even the opposite,” he says. “If you don’t have the physical strength, if you don’t have enough abs, back muscles, a strong thigh to bend the prosthesis, it’s not going to send energy back to you.”
Non-uniform age among para athletes
The smaller number of disabled people than “choosing” in the population also restrict the recruitment pool. In disabled sports, older athletes are thus less quickly replaced by younger competitors. Sylvain Ferez, a sociologist specializing in disabled sports and lecturer at the University of Montpellier, nevertheless points out the disparities hidden under the average age. “Age is not homogeneous” among para athletes, he recalls: he “is very linked to each discipline.”
Rejuvenation objective!
“There is a crossover of generations of different athletes,” continues the researcher, mentioning swimmer Ugo Didier, 22, cyclist Alexandre Léauté, 23, and wheelchair rugby player Ryadh Sallem, 53. Age differences that can be explained by the nature of the disciplines, which are more or less demanding. But the plan “Blue Ambition” led since 2020 by the National Sports Agency (ANS) in view of the Paris Olympic Games “rather brings up young people”, comments Sylvain Ferez. “I don’t think we’ll have athletes that old in 20 or 30 years if the high-performance preparation systems that were put in place with Paris 2024 and before continue,” he adds.
Creating vocations
On the side of both the women’s and men’s sitting volleyball teams, this is the hope displayed by the manager, Chrystel Bernou. If the discipline, she says, “allows people to play who may be less physically fit, with an advanced age, because they will compensate with their playing technique”, she considers it necessary “to rejuvenate the group so that the team project can continue.” And with the first Paralympic Games organized in France, accompanied by unprecedented media exposure, she would like to inspire vocations: “We hope that new athletes, sportsmen or people who just want to play sport, will join the clubs and that we can have the opportunity to recruit the best of them.”
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