Marie Patouillet: “When you don’t feel safe, you can’t give your best”

A bronze medal on track at the 2019 World Championships, three world runner-up titles since then, two bronze medals at the Tokyo Paralympics, a world champion title on the road in 2022… At 34, disabled cyclist Marie Patouillet has a well-stocked resume. For Madmoizelle she tells about her journey and his commitments.

“A choice without being one”

Marie Patouillet is born with an orthopedic defect which totally prevents him from running or walking for too long.

Originally, the athlete was intended for military medicine and was training for it. His physical conditions have improved, he has dedicated himself to sports for the disabled, excluding the disciplines that required walking or running. Para-cycling came from her : Along with swimming, it’s one of the few sports where you don’t have to carry your weight.

For the athlete, para-cycling is “a choice without being one: if I could still run, I wouldn’t be on a bike”, he says in front of the camera. However, very quickly, the successes multiplied, thanks to his hard work …

Because the parasport is a highly codified system, continues the cyclist. You have to go through several commissions to be classified and have your handicap approved according to the category you are affiliated with.

For Marie, it will be WC5: Female, C5. ” This is the category least affected by disability from a functional point of view. Conversely, C1 is the most affected category “explains the athlete.

Fight against discrimination

His sport practice is closely related to its commitments. As such, Marie Patouillet sees her participation in the future Paralympic Games in Paris as a way to get people talking about her sport, to get young people involved.

But he also wants to be transparent about the daily reality of the athletes: “I can’t tell girls to come to my sport without at least telling them. I can’t tell them ‘if you didn’t want a sexist sport then you had to do something else’”.

asked to her hair in the colors of the rainbow flag, worn during the world championships in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in 2022, Marie Patouillet says she lived it almost as a social experience: tired of seeing the media never talk about the sports results of parasportive athletes, she wondered if we would talk about her new cut. A bet won: the media sphere was there. This allowed him to raise the issue of LGBTQIA+ discrimination in sport.

” Ideally I would have liked to do it at the Paris Games, only the rules forbid us to show socio-political commitment. So I wouldn’t have had the right to run with that hair “, the athlete abounds.

Because Marie Patouillet is formal: “Any discrimination, whatever it is, has consequences for performance. When you don’t feel safe, you can’t give your best, you can’t express yourself freely”.

Because how do you remember Stubborn :

• 46% of French people have witnessed homophobic or transphobic behavior in sport, a figure that rises to 73% for LGBTQI+ people.
• 29% of LGBTQI+ people don’t go out in the world of sports.

Make the parasport visible

Another commitment of the athlete, the visibility of the parasport. Indeed, Marie Patouillet deplores the lack of communication around certain para-sports matches and competitions. Everything is linked, according to the cyclist: “ When visibility is lacking, discrimination can be more pronouncedbecause we talk less about it, so it’s more complicated “.

Because of this indifference, it becomes difficult for athletes to make a living from their sport and find sponsors. This is also where the media can have a role to play, believes Marie Patouiller: following parasporting events, accompanying the athletes and making the courses visible.

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