Whether it’s a marathon or a sprint, being a guide at the Paralympic Games is a whole symphony to find

Timothée Adolphe au côté de son guide Jeffrey Lami. MAXPPP – STADION-ACTU

In athletics, cycling and swimming, visually impaired and blind athletes have guides to accompany them in their race. Sprint events are the most technical.

It's an art. The connection between an athlete and his guide is the biggest challenge in the search for performance for the visually impaired. Of the three disciplines (track cycling, triathlon, athletics) that allow the presence of a guide during the race, athletics is the one that requires the most attention to detail, preparation, and work in advance.

“We are attached by a fifty-centimeter tie that it is forbidden to remove”, explains Gilles Gangloff, husband and first guide of Rosa Murcia-Gangloff from Béziers, who is in the running for a medal in the Paralympic marathon on August 8 and who has lost more than 80% of her total sight. The link is a flexible cord, measures 50 centimeters and allows great freedom of movement, especially for eating.

“We don't need to have exactly the same stride, unlike sprinters. For them, it's super hard, it requires so much work, repetition", Gilles admits.

"Synchronized swimming"

The sprinters' caste is indeed much more demanding. Already, their link, attached between each person's phalanges, measures only 10 centimeters. The scale of the gestures is reduced.

A kind of choreography then takes place.“I often say that it's a bit like synchronized swimming. We have to have the same stride, the same arm movements. And all that, at the same time.”From the side, we should only see one athlete”, image Timothé Adolphe, Olympic vice-champion of the 100m in Tokyo. This is called the work of “mirror”. When the athlete raises the right arm, the guide must raise the guide, the same for the legs.

"The guide must be faster than the athlete"

This symphonic work is the hardest work. It requires perfect understanding. Timothé Adolphe (34 years old) or Trésor Makunda (40 years old), five times medalist at the Paralympics (400m), have respectively had the same guides (they have two to three each) for seven and ten years years. Knowing each other is an essential element. "We are more than partners, we are friends, we share a lot outside", note Trésor.

"To be a guide, technically, you have to be faster than the&amp ;athlete being guided. Located on the outside of the lane, we cover more distance than the athlete who is on the inside. We must also have a larger stride field because we are adapts to his way of running. We then find a stride that corresponds to the two", explains a guide from the French Athletics Federation.

Two points of regulation: the pair occupies two lanes on the track and the athlete must always cross the finish line before the guide.