Disabilty : Bouygues in the starting blocks

In 2010, Gwladys took part with her swim club in the swimming event at the La Baule Triathlon. After racing in the same event a year later, she began competing at the international level in 2012. European and world parasport championships followed, one after the other, until in Rio, in 2016, Gwladys won a bronze medal, the first for France in the para-triathlon. That same year, she became a member of the Joiville Bataillon, a unit in the French Army made up of the athletes. Five years and numerous competitions later, the young woman form Saint-Jean-de-Monts, in southwestern France, took off for Tokyo. It was a tough meet, and she fought until the end. Disappointed with her performance, she nevertheless has wonderful memories of the week spent at the training camp at Mont Fuji to get acclimatized and prepare for the competition far from the hubbub of the Olympic Village. Since then, Gwladys, who is now in her thirties, has gone back to speaking in schools and companies, delighted to be able to talk about her sport and dispel the taboos around disabilities.

Thirty-six-year-old Nantenin Keita was born with a visual impairment and discovered sports in middle school. Always seeking to improve and come in first, she was spotted at the age of 15 by the Fédération française d’handisport and participated in her first international competition two years later. In 2006, she claimed the visually impaired world champion title in the 400 meters. “I wanted to show that with my handicap I could do things just as welle as, if not better than, people who don’t have one.” She considers the partnership with Bouygues an opportunity for mutual enrichment. “ We still have a lots to do, but I can raise awareness among a much larger public.” Her desire to win is also apparent in other commitments. Nantenin has taken over the foundation established by her father, Salif Keita, a popular Malian musician. Its mission is to improve the living conditions of albino children in Mali (she and her father are both albino) and to help young people with disabilities int Africa to become, through sport, full members of society. Her conviction: “The goal should be inclusion, not integration, so that everyone has the opportunity to experience life in the same way.”

An Olympic and Paralympic athlete, mother of three grown children, a young grandmother… at 53, Claire has already lived a thousand lives. The story begins in sports classes in Dinard, where as a young girl Claire excelled at swimming. She joined the French national team and swam the 200-meter butterfly at the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988. She then abandoned the pools to take the time to raise her children. In 2009, she was diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and began doing aquagym with a girlfriend. “My partner Frédéric asked me why I didn’t go back to swimming.” She accepted the challenge. With her brother Marc as trainer, she started working out and competing again after a 25-year pause. She thus became the Paralympics, doing so in the same sport. In early August, after giving her newly born granddaughter a goodbye hug, Claire was on her way to Japan, closing the Asian circle that began in Seoul. “It gave me enormous pleasure to compete in the final of the 100-meter butterfly. You must aim high and never stop believing.” On her return to Angers, where she is disability advisor for the département of Maine-et-Loire and a sponsor of the association Charcot-Marie-Tooth France, Claire headed back to the pool. Her goal? The 2024 Paris Olympics, of course.

Nineteen years old and unshakable optimism. After having a leg amputated at the age of eleven as a result of foot cancer, Typhaine played handball, but she had trouble accepting her disability. Then, in 2017, she attended a day-long presentation of para-athletics by Marie-Amélie Le Fur, a parasport athlete and multiple Olympic medal winner who is also a leg amputee. Typhaine tried the long jump using a prosthetic leg designed for running and decided that would be her sport. “I was very eager to compete to prove that I could do what I had set out to do.” While studying psychology at Tours, she trained between two and four hours a day. Being selected for the Paralympic Games in Tokyo was a wonderful surprise for one of the youngest athletes on the French team. “When we arrived for the opening ceremony, the stadium was empty, but the atmosphere was still fantastic. And when I saw my name displayed on the screens in the stadium, I cried for joy!” Typhaine sees the partnership with Bouygues Immobilier as a way to give companies a better understanding of disabilities so that the subject is no longer taboo. “I totally accept my disabilities today. I don’t hide my artificial limb.  On the contrary, I want to shatter the demeaning image of disabilities by showing that it’s possible to be happy.”