Nearly 9,000 euros thrown in the trash. On February 11, after leaving an EasyJet flight linking Nantes and Toulouse, Julie Marchand found her sports chair completely broken. The wheelchair basketball player, who has been playing with the French team for two years, later learned that the equipment was stuck under the baggage trailer when the plane arrived, and dragged on the airport tarmac on several tens of meters. As the young woman prepares to participate in a preparation course for the Paralympic qualifying tournament, it’s a cold shower: she notices twisted and filed metal, burnt safety straps, wheels deviating from their axis. “I had received the chair a month before, it was brand new. I hadn’t even finished paying for it!” she confides to L’Express.
Initially, the airline offered him a refund of 1,600 euros – less than 20% of the total price of the chair. Disappointed, Julie Marchand decides to alert the media, participates in several interviews, talks about the significant costs of Paralympic equipment… And finally receives a public apology from EasyJet, accompanied by a total reimbursement for her chair. “But for several weeks, I had to play with my old equipment. It had a huge impact on my performance, my physical preparation and my mental load,” regrets the player, whose team ultimately did not qualify. during the women’s repechage tournament for the 2024 Paralympic Games, organized in Osaka last April.
This mishap nevertheless allowed the basketball player to highlight the cost of the equipment necessary for the practice of disabled sports, and the difficulties of certain players in financing this equipment. “Despite the various public aids, the remainder is often significant for athletes. After the intervention of my mutual insurance company and Social Security, I had, for example, 5,000 euros left to find for my last chair,” explains -She. This sum was covered by the participation of several public and private organizations, including the Team 303 association – created in 2011 to provide financial and material assistance to Paralympic athletes from Pays de la Loire – and the personal savings of the basketball player, who claims to have financed a remainder of around “3,000 euros”. “And again, I am lucky to be in a helping department, the Pays de la Loire, and to have been supported by several organizations in this year of the Olympics… Which is not the case every year, and especially not the case for everyone,” she concludes.
“You have to know how to sell yourself”
Sami El Gueddari, responsible for performance and Paralympic strategy within the French Disabled Sports Federation (FFH), admits that equipment financing systems “are very variable” depending on the disciplines practiced, the profile of the players, the federations and territories from which they come. “First you have a disparity at the level of departmental and regional aid, which is not the same everywhere. The financing of departmental houses for disabled people (MDPH), for example, depends on the density of the territory and the volume of “support, and can change from one year to the next”, he underlines. The level of the athletes also comes into play: athletes who have obtained a world or Olympic medal over the last two years, and identified as being part of the “high performance” circle defined by the National Sports Agency (ANS), will thus be given priority. on all the financial systems put in place by the organization. For example, they benefit from a guaranteed annual income of at least 40,000 euros, and will be more widely supported in the purchase of their sports equipment. “We must also highlight a real paradigm shift in the run-up to the 2024 Olympics: the budget allocated by the ANS on the subject has been considerably reinforced for the most promising athletes,” Sami El Gueddari would like to point out.
“At the end of 2023, our budget specifically dedicated to disabled sports equipment amounted to 750,000 euros, compared to around 450,000 euros in 2021,” explains Arnaud Litou, Paralympic performance manager within the ANS high performance division. . “This obviously does not make it possible to help all athletes, nor to finance each piece of equipment 100%. But this budget makes it possible to supplement the financial levers already released by the federations and the athletes themselves,” he argues. For the athletes least supported by the ANS or the communities, a fundamental skill then comes into play. “You have to know how to sell yourself,” summarizes Sébastien Edelin, responsible for project coordination and financing within the Country Regional Disabled Sports Committee. Of the loire. “If the athlete is resourceful, presents his project to various companies and foundations, asks for help, sells his image and his story, he can do very well,” explains this professional, who has seen many athletes create online prize pools, set up meetings with local journalists and local sponsors, or even contact specialized associations directly.
“Everyone does what they can”
“As soon as we change chairs, we have to find new sponsors… Otherwise, we all find ourselves in the same situation, having to finance thousands of euros out of our own pockets,” says Louis Hardouin, qualified for the 2024 Paralympic Games in wheelchair basketball with the French men’s team. To finance his equipment, which is worth “the price of a car, between 8,000 and 12,000 euros”, the young man is currently counting on a partnership with an armchair brand which “gives him prices”. For the rest, the athlete regularly participates in events in order to meet new sponsors, to convince private companies potentially interested in investing in disabled sports, publishes on social networks, does not hesitate to participate in TV shows, and been looking for an agent for several months. “It’s a bit of resourcefulness, everyone does what they can. But it’s true that those who are in Paris will have more opportunities than those who live in the depths of a somewhat lost department, and those who have easy contact will also be better off,” he regrets. Despite his efforts and his skills, the bill remains steep for the future Olympic player: the part of personal financing of his last chair amounted to more than “4,000 euros”.
Same assessment for Jordan Ducret, wheelchair rugby player with the French team since 2017. In 2019, when purchasing his latest equipment – for the modest sum of 12,000 euros – the double European champion was able to count on the aid allocated by Nantes Métropole, the Loire-Atlantique department and the Pays de la Loire region, as well as on the valuable support of Team 303. But the investment of its wheels, to the tune of 2,500 euros, n he could not be taken care of: the young man financed them from his own funds. “With the guys from the French team, it’s a subject that comes up often: how to finance our equipment, bring together sponsors, find the right tips… It’s tricky, especially when we’re looking for an individual sponsor while we plays in a team sport,” he testifies. Especially since the rugby player, not very comfortable with social networks, does not consider himself “very good” at “breaking through” on the Internet. In the meantime, he continues to accept every invitation from the Rugby Federation to speak at round tables and meet possible partners, responds to interviews, hunts for the slightest opportunity to develop his visibility. “The hardest part is finding the first sponsor… Afterwards, things progress a little faster. We must not give up, we have no choice. Without financial aid, many of us would not be able to practice this sport,” he confides.
Jean-Baptiste Alaize, four-time world champion and record holder in the under-23 long jump, who represented France at the Rio Paralympic Games in 2016, has bitter memories of this “quest” for funding. “A jumping prosthesis can cost up to 30,000 euros. I did a series of interviews and TV shows to find sponsors, I communicated a lot, but despite that, I had a lot of trouble finding funding. In France, disabled sports unfortunately remain a luxury,” he regrets. So much so that in 2021, the athlete is launching an online fundraiser to gather the funds necessary to finance his prostheses, before trying to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics – for which he will ultimately not be selected. “It’s a mental load before the preparation, the time spent, and the feeling that we are not really recognized for our true value”, he estimates three years later, as he prepares to to compete in the Paris Olympics for Burundi, his native country. “Here again, the scenarios vary greatly: many fitting centers take athletes as their muses, and offer them the equipment as such. Others benefit from assistance from the ANS. But it happens that some must also pay for all or part of this equipment,” comments Sami El Gueddari.
Mathieu Bosredon, European champion and vice-world champion in paracycling, admits that new technologies “have exploded the price of equipment” in certain sports, particularly in his discipline, and that sponsorship is “a real subject in the disabled sports”. “But it is also much simpler than before to find partners, with financial aid that would have been unimaginable even ten years ago. There is a real awareness on the subject,” he adds. Since the Rio Games in 2016, the man has seen contract proposals become easier and more numerous in his discipline: “Before, we really had to seek out companies, explain our project, the benefits of a possible partnership … Today, the offers are much more regular, and even more so with the Paris Olympics.” The challenge remains, according to the athlete, to perpetuate this interest of the private world and public institutions: “It would be a shame if this commitment from large companies and the State falls like a blast after the Paris Games”, warns -he.
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