Angers (AFP)
"I have a few more wrinkles and my legs don't work as well", laughs the disabled swimmer Claire Supiot, 52, selected for the Tokyo Paralympic Games in 2021, 33 years after having participated in the Olympic Games in Seoul, in 1988.
Suffering from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an inherited neuropathy that affects the nerves controlling the muscles of the legs and leads to chronic fatigue, she will combine participation in the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in the same sport, a rarity at the international level. .
"Thirty-three years after my first Olympics", where she had been eliminated in the playoffs, "the maturity is there and the pleasure even more important", she confides to AFP when leaving the pool of the Jean-pool. Bouin, in Angers.
"This time, I intend to go as far as possible, even to get on the podium and make history ...", she says.
An ambition reinforced by her recent participation in the French handisport swimming championships, on December 12 and 13 in Angers, where she set three records: France over 100 meters butterfly, Europe over 50 meters freestyle and world over 100 meters freestyle.
"This proves that anything is possible, at any age, provided you give yourself the means and have a lot of support", launches the athlete from Angers Natation, classified "S8" (the classes go from S1 to S10, from the heaviest to the lightest motor handicap).
"She has exceptional mental resources," observes Antoine Robelet, 41, a disabled swimmer in the same club and suffering from the same disease.
"She is able to string together several good times in a row, when others would be exhausted", he explains, recalling that "during the recent championships in France, she went to win a world record while she was in his seventh race ... "
- "Like a dolphin" -
If she needs assistance before diving and cannot push on her legs during turns, "in the water, I feel great, like a dolphin", smiles this slender brunette, mother of three children. moves with a colorful cane, like the nails on his hands and feet.
Born in 1968 in Angers, she learned to swim at the age of four and a half.
At 13, she went to sports studies in Dinard (Ille-et-Vilaine) where she was spotted by trainer Jacques Meslier.
"I was not the most technically gifted but I had the mind," she explains.
A member of the French swimming team from 1984 to 1988, she has nine French championship titles to her list, including eight in the 200-meter butterfly.
Recordwomen of France in this category, when she was just 20 years old, she realized her dream: to be selected to participate in the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Eliminated in the playoffs, Claire Supiot put back her swimsuit.
- "Better than in 1988" -
"I wanted to discover something else," she sums up.
"I discovered triathlon, I got married, I had three children ...".
Having become a lifeguard, it was an accident to the foot that brought her illness to light.
The diagnosis fell in 2008. "At first, I denied the disease. Then I came to understand it," said the swimmer.
Employee of the departmental council of Maine-et-Loire, where she is a disability referent, she resumed the path of the basins in 2015, taming her fatigue and muscle weakness.
Trained by Maxime Baudry and her brother Marc Supiot, she multiplies her performances (European champion in 50 meters freestyle in 2018, two bronze medals at the 2019 world championships).
"Doing what she does at 52 is simply exceptional," greets Marc Supiot, five years her senior.
"She has a remarkable work force and the perspective to be even better than in 1988 ...".
Between training, physiotherapy or physical preparation, his schedule, allowing a few micro-naps, is precise because we must already prepare for the next big deadline before Tokyo: the European Disabled Swimming Championships, scheduled for May 2021 in Funchal (Madeira ).
© 2020 AFP