For them too, the event was a great first. The reward of a long work of undermining. For the first Grand Prix de France, Oury Stantzman and his team called on Herwan Onanga-Deleval and Marzieh Hamidi. Taekwondoists in the making, they both fill the ranks of the French group for the able-bodied, but it's in the basement of the Marcel-Cerdan sports palace in Levallois-Perret that they warmed up the para athletes for the last day of the French Grand Prix on Monday. "At INSEP, we take turns training with the parathletessays the young taekwondoist.Since I fight in the same weight category as Bopha Kong(-58kg, NDLR)Our training sessions together have multiplied, and I have quickly taken a liking to it. " The same is true for Marzieh Hamidi, training partner of Djelika Diallo and Zakia Khudadadi. "We are both Afghans, although we didn't know each other very well before. Since we arrived here last year, the connection has been natural. Even if I can't fight yet, participating in my own way in the first Grand Prix de France was an important step"she says. A renewal for the refugee athlete.

The benefit of adaptation

Born in exile in Iran twenty years ago, Marzieh Hamidi became passionate about martial arts at only fifteen years old. Her meteoric rise, with eight medals, including six gold, in regional and national competitions organized in Afghanistan, even allowed her to join the Afghan national team in 2021. The same year, however, the return of the Taliban regime and its extreme repression of women, symbolized by the ban on women's sports, forced her to flee to France. "Serving as a training partner for two different weight classes is relatively complex (Zakia Khudadadi fights in -47kg while Djelika Diallo expresses herself in -65kg, NDLR).Zakia has a great vivacity, while Djelika's legs are very big, and she attacks constantly. I have to adapt to these characteristics, and of course, this improves my technical and tactical aspects"says Marzieh Hamidi.Et Herwan Onanga-Deleval?"Training with Bopha Kong has been a blessing physically. As head strikes are forbidden in para, body strikes are multiplied, and their impact on the "cardio" is immense. As soon as I returned to competition, the difference was noticeable.swears the bronze medalist of the last French championships. Hard, but worth it.

Dreams of Olympus

In a corner of his mind, however, Herwan Onanga-Deleval is thinking about 2024. "The Olympics are the dream of every child who takes up sport, and we inevitably think about them even more when a Grand Prix is organized in the same place two years before.admits the twenty-year-old.Personally, I'm aiming more for Los Angeles in 2028... And even though I would prefer to participate in the 2024 Games as an athlete, contributing as Bopha's training partner would bring me a huge gain in experience. " When one knows the pressure that sometimes represents a first participation in the great mass of the sport, difficult to do without such an experience at the sides of the Paralympian Bopha Kong. On the other hand, Marzieh Hamidi does not hide her dreams of living the opening ceremony from the Seine: "Of course, I still hope to participate in the Olympic Games in Paris, and even more so when I see the excitement of last weekendsmiles the twenty-year-old taekwondoist.However, the cessation of practice and competition that I underwent requires a lot of work on my part to regain the level I had acquired."This week, Marzieh Hamidi and Herwan Onanga-Deleval have returned to the mats of the INSEP, with perhaps a few more keys to blossom at the highest level, and keep their dreams alive.