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Eleven gold medals, twelve silver and fifteen bronze. This is the list of achievements displayed by the French delegation at the end of Tuesday, after a new harvest of podiums in swimming, and almost a week after the start of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. This places the country fifth in the medal rankings.
These first eleven places already allow the French team to equal the result of the last Paralympiad, in 2021. The Blues left Tokyo with 11 gold medals, 15 silver, and 29 bronze, ranking 14th in the nations ranking. In addition, France has already surpassed, all medals combined, the results of Rio in 2016 (9 gold, 5 silver, 14 bronze).
This inflation of trinkets can be explained in part by the fact that there are more French athletes than in the previous edition of the competition. There are 237 participating in Paris 2024, compared to 137 in Tokyo. While the total number of athletes has remained the same: 4,400. In addition, French supporters are there to support their athletes. So much so that the para-sportsmen, not used to such enthusiasm, have had to prepare to perform in the noise.
Moreover, the same trend – doing better and more – is observable on the Olympic Games side: France broke its medal record by winning 64 in total, compared to 43 previously in Beijing in 2008.
“We will truly count at the end”
Before the Paris Games, the French Paralympic Committee had announced that it was aiming for eighth place in the nations’ rankings – the objective has so far been achieved – and to obtain twenty gold medals. “We are on target, we still have the potential to win medals in the second part, declared the national technical director of the French para-sports federation, Grégory Saint-Géniès, on RMC Monday. We have only just passed the first week, there is still a whole week to go, so we are really staying focused. (…) We will really count at the end.”
France won gold in swimming (Ugo Didier and Emeline Pierre), cycling (Alexandre Léauté, Dorian Foulon, Marie Patouillet), triathlon (Alexis Hanquinquant, Jules Ribstein), shooting (Tanguy de La Forest), badminton (Lucas Mazur and Charles Noakes), and also in boccia, a discipline similar to pétanque in which Aurélie Aubert created a surprise on Monday.
All the results of the Paralympic Games can be found on our website. You can also follow the events day by day live on the page dedicated to the Paralympic Games.
Updated Tuesday, September 3 at 11 p.m.with the addition of the day’s medals.
Source: www.liberation.fr
