Handi-Valide Day in Joinville-le-Pont

It is also an opportunity for me to make peace with sport. After my high-level gymnastics career, for a long time I had the impression that the sport had prevented me from living, which he had at once damaged physically and psychologically. Because I had given everything for my sport, sacrificing a lot of things, and I had not had the results I dreamed of having.

I used to make him look like a sportsman.

In reality, recently, I realize that it's all the opposite, and that's why today I want to celebrate the sport, to whom I owe so much.

Little I couldn't stand the curious looks and the mockery of other children, I needed a way out... It was through sport that I found him. The more I became successful, the less people told me about my funny head, the more people told me about my results. I was seen differently. I was very happy and proud, so I gave even more energy in this loophole that had become a passion.

So the sport allowed me to forget my difference, to be accepted like everyone else, and even to overcome this difference. But more than that, thanks to the sport, I have unique memories! Memories of victories, memories of defeats, memories of travel across the world, and especially friends for life, with whom I have shared moments of rare intensity, filled with joy and sorrow sometimes, but above all with joy, complicity, and celebration! Sport also made it possible to meet love.

As for the difference, one speaks of visible, invisible difference, sometimes both. We talk about disability: disabled, inadequate... but in reality we have to say that we intrigue as much as we inspire. After all these years of high-performance sport, I realized that it was no use trying to please others to integrate, but trying to please oneself above all. It's the key! And sport allows us to do that because it allows us to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Sport is a revealing of authenticity, it comes to the bottom of us looking for what is stronger, more beautiful, more courageous, too, to share it with others, and with others.

So let's be generously authentic, unique, different, weird, and proud of being, in sport and in life. »

The world of entertainment allows me to record this difference, to expose and tell it. That's why I feel so good!