‘Incredible energy’: how Paris crowds lifted French paralympians to medal glory

When French athlete Aurélie Aubert’s sharp strategy and ice-cool precision won her a boccia gold at the Paris Paralympics, the fervour of the nationwide victory celebrations seemed likely to change the country for ever.

Aubert, 27, who has cerebral palsy and competed in the BC1 category, took France’s first ever medal in a sport which is a test of skill and tactics akin to bowls and France’s favourite ballgame, pétanque.

Aubert’s performance was accompanied by crowds of flag-waving French supporters singing the national anthem. Later she was greeted by thousands of supporters on the stage at the Club France fanzone as golden confetti poured from the ceiling and TV crews jostled to interview her.

“Like chess, you have to always predict the next move, and be constantly thinking,” Aubert said. It could be seen as a fitting metaphor for France’s late embrace of parasport.

The Paris Paralympic Games has been a huge success in France: of almost 2.5m tickets sold, more than 90% were to French people. There were record-breaking French TV viewing figures. French athletes, who said the home fans’ cheering was unlike anything they had ever seen, sharply increased their gold medal haul from the Tokyo Games.

But looking forward to the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympics, France now wants to strategise and expand this newfound focus on parasport, which for decades was underfunded and not well supported. The first step is to improve access – just before the Games, only 1.4% of France’s vast nationwide network of sports clubs and associations said they had the capacity to include people with a disability.

France was gripped by the stunning performance of its men’s blind football team as they reached the final at the sellout stadium under the Eiffel Tower, with millions watching live on TV. They are now household names, including the captain, Frédéric Villeroux, considered one of the top players in the world. But it was all the more spectacular given that the French team did not have the same level of training as some of the outfits they competed against.

“We take holiday time from our jobs to get together and we train 45 days a year,” Villeroux told French TV. “For Brazil, it’s three or four months a year.”

Para cycling brought in a large share of France’s gold medals and shone a spotlight on new sports personalities. Champion track cyclist Marie Patouillet, 36, a doctor, used her numerous TV appearances to speak out against sexism and campaign for LGBTQ+ visibility in elite sport. “The public carried me enormously,” she said of the cheering at the velodrome. “This velodrome was very French. We felt it. It was an incredible energy.”

The Breton cyclist Alexandre Léauté became France’s biggest medal-winner with two golds – in the C2 3000m individual pursuit and the individual time trial – as well as two bronzes in the C1-3 1000m time trial and road race. He said: “To have the public pushing us every day, it’s impressive. This is very positive for the Paralympic movement.”

The ever-present French national anthem, La Marseillaise, was a boost to athletes such as Charles Noakes, who beat Britain’s Krysten Coombs to take gold in the SH6 badminton. “It was really special because I’ve been listening to it on my phone every morning and every evening … [Now] I managed to get to listen to it in this fabulous stadium and I’m so happy,” he said.

Para swimming was another French focus. Emeline Pierre took gold in the S10 100m freestyle and bronze in 100m backstroke. A former gymnast, she began para-swimming after a serious arm injury in a fall during a gym competition.

“There’s a new generation coming to light,” she said after becoming the first French female Paralympic swimming champion since London in 2012.

Ugo Didier, a 22-year-old engineering student and one of France’s best known para-swimmers, took gold in the S9 400m freestyle as well as two silvers, while his brother, Lucas Didier, also took a medal in MS9 singles table tennis.

Another set of brothers made headlines – swimmer Alex Portal, 22, took three silvers and a bronze and 17-year-old Kylian took a bronze. Laurent Chardard, 29, took two bronze medals in the S6 100m freestyle and the 50m butterfly. A former bodyboarder, he took up para-swimming in 2017 after losing his arm and leg in a shark attack off Réunion. Watching wheelchair rugby during the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio had encouraged him to return to sport.

“I never forget I’m a builder at heart and I come from a modest background,” said the gold-medal winner Alexis Hanquinquant after the PTS4 triathlon. A stonemason from Normandy who had his lower right-leg amputated after a work accident in 2010, he carried the flame at the Olympics opening ceremony.

Related: Paris Paralympics 2024: day 10 – in pictures

Djelika Diallo, 19, who took a silver in the K44 65g taekwondo, now becomes a French gold hope for LA. She said the fervour in France was far more than she had expected. “It’s incredible, it was amazing. Normally we don’t have this many people that come and watch Paralympic sports.We’re not used to having such a big crowd.”

The Games also changed the Paralympic vocabulary in France – with an emphasis on shared humanity, not “superhuman” metaphors. When the French Olympic judo star Teddy Riner repeatedly referred to his awe of Paralympic elite stars as extraordinary “superheroes”, the French wheelchair basketball player, Sofyane Mehiaoui, firmly replied that inclusivity meant being treated the same. “We’re not superheroes, we’re athletes,” he said.

In Libération, the writer Jonathan Bouchet-Petersen said the Paralympic Games had seen an extraordinary wave of acceptance in France which must not be an end point but a new beginning. “It must be a starting point to allow 12 million French people with a visible or invisible disability to be fully considered by society,” he said.