Marie-Amélie Le Fur won two gold medals (400m and length) at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. - CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP

  • Like the Olympics, the Tokyo Paralympics have been postponed to 2021 (August 24 to September 5) due to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • This postponement will greatly impact the life of Marie-Amélie Le Fur, a figure in disabled sports in France and who had planned to end her career just after. 
  • It will be necessary, for another year, to reconcile family life, professional life and intensive training, in an economic context necessarily turned upside down. 

Each week of June, 20 Minutes gives the floor to athletes who should have participated in the Games in a few weeks. Resumption of training, planning for the coming year, psychological consequences, we will discuss with them all the facets of postponing their Olympic dream. This week, Marie-Amélie Le Fur, who had planned to hang up after this deadline and who sees all her projects postponed by a year.

Marie-Amélie Le Fur is the figure of disabled sports in France. Triple Paralympic champion (100m in London, then 400m and length in Rio), quadruple world champion, she is also since 2018 the new president of the French Paralympic and Sports Committee (CPSF). She therefore experienced the confinement and the announcement of the postponement of the Games as close as possible to the fears of her comrades, and at the same time faced with the obligation to make a very important decision for her. The 31-year-old athlete, amputated left leg following a scooter accident in 2004, had indeed planned to retire immediately after this deadline, in particular to spend more time with his 10 month old daughter . She tells 20 Minutes how she made the decision to continue, and explains the specific difficulties of Paralympic athletes caused by the health crisis.

How did the containment go for you?

I adapted, like everyone else. I was lucky enough to have access near my home [she lives near Blois, in the Center region] to small paths, which allowed me to continue my training. Finally, especially physiological training, more than technical and muscular. I took the opportunity to rework bases and make land. And as soon as the confinement was lifted, I benefited, like others, from the derogatory measure allowing high-level athletes, in agreement with the local authorities, to access the sports infrastructure. So I was able to resume normal training from May 13, whether in bodybuilding or on the stadium.

How did you live the announcement of the postponement of the Games?

I lived it with my double cap, that of athlete and that of president of the Committee. Postponement was inevitable in any case, it was the best solution. Sportingly, ethically and sanitary, it was not possible to maintain these Games. The selection process had become too complicated, and then displacing populations from around the world in July was not possible. The decision may have taken a little while to come, but the new dates were announced very quickly, however. It's a good thing, it allowed all athletes to settle on a new goal.

And for the athlete that you are?

There, this announcement was very difficult because it means the postponement of my career stop. That means that for a year, you have to continue training, maintain this very restrictive rhythm on a daily basis, which has a strong impact on my personal life. But after a time of reflection, discussions with family and with my coaches, we decided to leave. The only insecurity remains the financial question and the way in which my partners will accept or not to follow me one more year, in a context of economic crisis which is more. I know that I am not the only athlete to ask myself the question of the financial sustainability of the project with this additional year.

Did you hesitate a lot to continue?

Yes, I will not hide it. I have been a mom for 10 months. I had prepared to "sacrifice" the first year of my daughter, with a lot of absences, internships, trips, busy weekends. But having to do two years on this model, it really required that we ask the question within the family. We also discussed with the coaches, to find out how we could integrate this additional year while respecting the fact that I am not just an athlete, but also President of the Committee and a mom who needs to be with her daughter. We took all the time from confinement to reflect, I also contacted my partners to see how they could continue to accompany me. Once it was all put together, we thought we were going.

Are you going back to work anyway?

Ah yes, if we go there, it is fully! I will present myself only on the length. The competition will be much stronger, my opponents are gaining strength. They are much younger than me, and often at the start of their sporting practice, so a year for them is the chance to be able to progress very widely. But it is also what will make the competition more beautiful. This title will be challenged, my world record [6.01m in 2018] may potentially fall by 2021. But that's why we love sport!

Marie-Amélie Le Fur raised the world record for length to 6.01m in 2018. - F Pervillé / FFH

To come back to the difficulties posed by this postponement, did you have, as president of the CPSF, a lot of feedback from athletes anxious for their future?

Indeed, we have a lot of questions and concerns. Athletes do not necessarily turn to us but first to their federations, which are better able to provide them with answers. They are the ones who really support athletes on a daily basis. We are here to support the Federations. But it is true that we were told many questions, at first about the postponement or not of the Games, then about the deadline. Today the big question concerns the new steps to qualify for the Games. We cannot yet answer with certainty. At the international level, it is quite marked, we are now waiting for the French Federations to give us the paths too. This will secure the athletes by setting a schedule.

Are there really struggling athletes who are wondering if they will be able to arrange for this extra year?

Yes, we have heard about situations with a great deal of uncertainty, whether in terms of partner support, CIP negotiations [professional integration contracts] or working time arrangements. During the confinement, we were a year and a half away from the Games. It still leaves time to discuss, possibly turn around in case of loss of partners, find how to remedy it, how the Federations can help, how the Paralympic Committee as a last resort can also act to give additional impetus. There are alerts, but for the moment it is complicated to have an overall vision because the companies themselves are in full recovery and do not yet know if they will be able to continue to support the sportsmen.

How was containment particularly difficult for disabled athletes to manage?

Medical and paramedical follow-up was very disrupted. In the case of pathologies for people with disabilities, this has been a very important obstacle because there is even more physiotherapy work to promote mobility and recovery. Then we have a lot of sports in which there is a guide or a carer who is there to contribute to sports performance. All this was not possible during confinement, and still is not currently possible in some disciplines.

Will all this have an impact on the rest of the careers of these athletes who were unable to train as usual?

Yes, potentially. But the athletes have not been abandoned either. A link has been kept by the Federations, from the monitoring carried out by the National Sports Agency to ensure that we do not have athletes who are in too great difficulty or who could have dropped out. The post-containment recovery was conditioned on a medical check-up, to check the physical but also the psychological state of the sportsman. And that was very important. This enabled the medical profession to detect athletes who are potentially in difficulty and to specifically support them in their recovery.

To what extent is the Games a crucial meeting point for Paralympic athletes, perhaps even more than for the able-bodied?

Success at the Paralympics can be a very important stepping stone in a career. It can be known, better structured, better supported, and simply see its performance and investment recognized. Afterwards, it's not just a media springboard. And fortunately. If our athletes were doing this just for the media feedback we give them, many would have already given up. The Paralympic Games are still very much in the shadows, as we saw at the time of the postponement and during the confinement, where few people wondered about the impact of de-training among Paralympic athletes. It is a lot of difficulties and complexity of preparation which were reinforced by this health crisis, and these are things which are not known to the general public because the visibility of parasports is still very low. It exists almost exclusively only at the time of the Games.

Is it a French specificity or is it the same in all countries?

There are disparities. France is not the best country in terms of visibility, recognition, media coverage and support. But we must recognize that we are ahead of many others. We are in a system that still needs to be improved. Media visibility, research, the way we cultivate and develop sports performance must evolve. We still have room for improvement, which exists in the Olympic movement but which is even greater in the Paralympic one.

You were involved in the Athletes' Committee during the Paris 2024 candidacy. Can these Games in France be a rocker from this point of view?

It is in any case a unique opportunity that should not be missed. It allows all the actors to be linked. We welcome the world on the theme of very high sports performance, but also of environmental commitment for a societal sport. We use it to change the place of sport, and for us in particular to change that of handicap sport in France, be it high performance or the development of practices. We do not have coverage of qualifying events, of daily training, when we are convinced that if there was long-term visibility, it would be a good way to publicize our athletes, to see what that they do. And in view of the 2024 Games, to transform viewers into spectators because these athletes, they will know them and they will already be used to the rules of Paralympic sports.

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