Tokyo (AFP)

Unique position and state-of-the-art wheelchair: for Stéphane Houdet, gold medalist in doubles at 50, wheelchair tennis is partly a mechanical sport.

Sketches of a flag bearer who does not intend to stop in Tokyo.

Stéphane Houdet is easy to recognize on a tennis court.

Placed on his saddle, the pelvis open rather than folded at the bottom of a seat, he seems to flutter on the acrylic of the Tokyo grounds.

His all-carbon armchair sends others back to relics from the past.

At each change of side, he repeats a ritual.

Less a superstition than the illustration of his mechanical obsession: a series of turns in a kind of scull with the worried look of the one checking the proper functioning of his mount.

"It's a mixture of mechanical sports and tennis and therefore it is absolutely necessary to be innovative and efficient on the mechanical part", explains to AFP the standard bearer who designed his chair from a blank page with a team of researchers in particular Arts and Crafts.

"He is really free. It has the advantage a lot on the pivots and he is very fast in a straight line, more than me", judges his double partner Nicolas Peifer.

"My new challenge is to make the lightest armchair in the world, Houdet thinks. Because it will be useful to everyone. Mine weighs ten kilos, it should be lowered under six."

“The seats are very important,” admits the Japanese world No. 1 Shingo Kunieda on the subject of the racing car of his ex-doubles partner.

"But at the end of the day, we're the ones who don't play the chairs."

And racket in hand, Stéphane Houdet is doing quite well too.

Already before his accident, he was thirteenth best French player among juniors (with a national ranking up to 2/6).

"That's good. However, it's also far," he sums up.

At the time, he therefore gave priority to his veterinary studies and gradually let go of tennis.

The French Nicolas Peifer and Stéphane Houdet double gold medalists at the Tokyo Paralympics, September 3, 2021 Philip FONG AFP

It was after his motorcycle injury in Austria in 1996 at the start of a planned trip through Europe that he returned to the sport.

- The meeting with Cruyff -

He started with golf, became number one in European handigolf and in 2004 met Johan Cruyff whom he called upon through his foundation to set up a world circuit.

The football legend advises him to take inspiration from wheelchair tennis, which the Frenchman discovered on this occasion.

"There I began to dream, he remembers. It's super well organized, it was my first love, it's a sport that is professional, played at the Games, on the Grand Slam program .."

At the same time, he met a player with a latest generation prosthesis on the greens and decided to take the step of amputation.

"It had been eight years since I had a stiff leg with back pain, and no functional interest," he explains.

Stéphane Houdet during the doubles match against the British pair Alfie Hewett-Gordon Reid at the Tokyo Paralympics, September 3, 2021 Philip FONG AFP

He started wheelchair tennis the following year, in 2005. Sixteen years later, he did not plan to quit anytime soon, even at age 50.

"The advantage is to be able to put on my prosthesis after the match and to be able to walk, I rest my upper limbs", describes Stéphane Houdet after his gold medal.

"We will play in Paris in 2024, he begins seriously. Los Angeles then and then we saw that there was Brisbane in 2032. That's good, we like the sun."

© 2021 AFP