The Paralympic Games are getting closer! In Paris, 11 of the 15 Olympic competition venues will once again be used for the Paralympic Games, which requires some adaptations, such as at the Champ-De-Mars. At the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the temporary stadium where the beach volleyball events were held is being transformed to host the blind football competitions.
On the Olympic sites, the five rings give way to the Agitos, the three commas that are the emblem of the International Paralympic Committee. And for ten days, around forty workers have been busy on the stadium at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Dedicated to beach volleyball during the Olympic Games, it will be used as a football field for blind football — a contraction of blindness, the state of a person deprived of sight — and football. And there is a lot of work to be done.
Main transformation: the sand gives way to a bright blue synthetic grass. It was obviously too complicated to remove 400 tons of sand that make up the beach volleyball area, says Gautier Jourdet, the infrastructure manager at the Eiffel Tower stadium, and so we came to add flooring on top of the sand. That meant leveling it quite precisely so that the floor wouldn’t move, of course. »
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Acoustics are essential in blind football
The blind football pitch will rest on 80 cm of sand: “ You have to imagine : When you see the Paralympic blind football athletes running around the playground and practicing their sport, they will actually be on top of a sandpit. “, continues Gautier Jourdet. A configuration which has a major interest according to the infrastructure manager: ” Finally, installing a blind football pitch on sand is also technically relevant for acoustics, acoustics obviously being a very important issue for blind football. ” Since, at In blind football, athletes find their way around using sounds: bells inside the ball allow it to be located on the field and to pass, players announce themselves by shouting “yes”.
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Blind football is a very impressive Olympic discipline and, contrary to what one might think, collisions are rather rare. With the resonance of sounds moving through the air, [les joueurs] can sense mass in space. It’s called the sixth sense. It’s like bats actually, they have a sense of mass, explains Rémi Garranger, coach of the French Espoirs blind football team, There are players who are able to go five centimeters from a barrier and leave without touching it. They feel it. They tell me that they feel like a spider web on their face. And there are some who can even feel the others. »
For the first match, nearly 10,000 spectators are expected to watch blind football, a world first!
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