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OLYMPICS

Paris suburb 175km from sea bids to host surfing at Olympics

A Paris suburb 175 kilometres from the sea has joined two famous beach resorts in bidding to host surfing at the 2024 Olympics.

Published: 4 April 2019 08:42 CEST
Paris suburb 175km from sea bids to host surfing at Olympics
Paris suburb is competing with Biarritz for the event. Photo: AFP

Surfing will join the Olympics in Tokyo next year. It will stay on the programme in 2024, alongside rock climbing, skateboarding and breakdancing in an attempt to give the Games a youthful look.

Paris suburb Sevran has neither coastline nor river. It has a canal. It also has plans to open a leisure park, called “The Greater Paris Wave”, which will include a wave machine and is due to open in 2023 under the slogan: “Surf'in Sevran”.

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Sevran is the poorest suburb in the greater Paris region. Photo: AFP

It is also, local leaders said, the poorest department in the Parisian region.

All this, mayor Stephane Blanchet and regional administration president Bruno Beschizza wrote in a letter declaring the candidacy, makes Sevran an ideal candidate to host the surfing competitions in the 2024 Olympics. 

They said the site would be in an “eco-designed” district “10 minutes from Charles de Gaulle airport” which would also include sports for the “young and urban” – skateboarding, climbing and breakdancing.

The park's biggest attraction would be an outdoor surf pool able to generate 1,000 waves per hour and accommodate 100 surfers at one time.

These facilities “will help spread the wealth generated and also the values conveyed by this global event” and make Sevran “a destination,” said the letter.

The president of the French Federation of surfing, Jean-Luc Arassus, has told local media that the planned Sevran surf was “interesting both from the economic and sporting” point of view.

“The artificial wave must be as close as possible to natural conditions, preserving the uncertainty of waves in the natural environment,” Arassus said, adding that, on the other hand, artificial waves remove the uncertainty of the weather.

He also said that there are more surfers in the populous Paris region than anywhere else in France and that “there is great potential to find among this population, a future world champion.”

Biarritz and Lacanau, which face the rolling Atlantic waves on the southwest coast of France, have also signalled their interest in hosting the sport for the Paris Games. 

Many of the other planned Paris Olympic sites are along the banks of the Seine. 

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SPORT

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation

The Paralympics is full of stories of disabled athletes overcoming the odds to achieve sporting greatness but few bear the trauma of Jean-Baptiste Alaize.

Published: 28 August 2020 10:06 CEST
The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation
Jean-Baptiste Alaize training in Antibes. All photos: AFP

The 29-year-old French sprinter and long-jumper, who features in Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix released on Wednesday, was just three years old when he lost his right leg.

Not by accident or illness but by the brutal hack of a machete.

A child caught up in the civil war in Burundi in October 1994, he watched as his mother was beheaded.

“For years, every time I closed my eyes, I had flashes. I saw my mother being executed in front of me,” he tells AFP after a training session in Antibes, running his finger across his throat.

The killers left the Tutsi boy for dead. Alaize carries a large scar on his back but he was also slashed across the neck, right arm and right leg by his Hutu neighbours.

He woke up in hospital several days later, alive but missing the lower part of his right leg which had had to be amputated.

“With my mother, we ran, we ran, but we didn't manage to run far,” he says. “We were executed 40 metres from the house.”

A decade later, after coming to France in 1998 and being adopted by a French family, he joined the athletics club in Drôme.

Fitted with a prosthetic limb, he discovered that running gave him his first night without a nightmare since the attack.

“From my first steps on the track, I had the impression that I had to run as long as possible, so as not to be caught,” says Alaize who now lives in Miami.

“I remember like it was yesterday my first night after this session, it was… wow! I had cleared my mind. I was free.

“My energy, my hatred, were focussed on the track. I understood that sport could be my therapy.”

He tried horseback riding and enjoyed it, reaching level six, out of seven, until he pulled the plug.

“It was my horse that let off steam and not me,” he laughs.

The psychologist did not work out either.

“She made me make circles and squares. After a few sessions I told her that I wanted to change my method.”

However he did click with his school physical education teacher, who directed him to athletics after he had anchored his team to a spectacular “comeback” win in a 4×100 metre relay.

His classmates had no idea he was an amputee. He had hidden it to avoid teasing and more racial abuse.

“I was called 'bamboula', dirty negro, the monkey. It was hard.”

Fortunately, the Alaize family, who adopted him after he had spent five years in a Bujumbura orphanage where his father had abandoned him, gave Jean-Baptiste a base and a home that he had not had for years.

“When I arrived here I didn't know it was possible,” he said.

“I had lost that side, to be loved. I still can't understand how racism can set in, when I see my parents who are white, and I am a black child… they loved me like a child.”

His parents, Robert and Daniele, had already adopted a Hutu child from Rwanda, renamed Julien.

John-Baptist was originally called Mugisha. It means “the lucky child” which is not quite how things worked out. His new family name, though, suits him better. Alaize is a pun in French for 'a l'aise' – at ease.

The French disabled sports federation spotted the prodigy, and he began collecting his first trophies, including four junior world titles at long jump, three of them with world records.

“It was starting to change my life and I was happy to represent France,” he says.

He went to the Paralympic Games in London (2012) and Rio (2016), where he finished fifth in the long jump, just five centimetres short of the bronze medal.

Now armed with his state-of-the-art prosthesis, which he nicknamed Bugatti, he was dreaming of taking a step up at Tokyo 2020 and going home to France with a medal but the postponement of the Games has decimated his sponsorships.

“I'm still looking to compete at Tokyo 2021 or 2022 and Paris 2024,” he says.

“If I don't succeed, I will have to turn the page which would be sad.”

He hopes that Rising Phoenix will raise his profile and maybe attract some sponsors.

The documentary's producer Ian Bonhote is in no doubt that Alaize's star is rising.

“He bursts through the screen. His story will resonate,” he says.

“The nine athletes in our documentary all have different backgrounds, but none survived what Jean-Baptiste suffered. His disability was imposed on him in such a savage and violent way.”

Rising Pheonix is available now to view on Netflix.

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