Paris 2024 Paralympic Games | They will thrill us : Lucas Mazur
On the occasion of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, there are many who will provide us with indescribable emotions. Lucas Mazur, titleholder in Para badminton in his SL4 single category, the class for standing players with a disability of only one lower limb, will be one of the headliners in the French delegation. In Paris, he's hoping to double his tally. And he's even aiming for the double, with Faustine Noël, in mixed doubles. Portrait.
His life could have been cut short. Since then, he's been munching his way through the various disciplines that have shaped his character and cultivated his passion for sport. Lucas Mazur was just three years old when he suffered a stroke. An emergency operation and long weeks in hospital not without consequences for the body of the native of Saint-Jean-de-Braye in the Loiret region.
Football, rugby then badminton
The after-effects were to remain with his body, and his right ankle was unable to develop as it should. The handicap is there. But it won't be prohibitive for the son of a former member of the French table tennis team and a former top-level basketball champion, in the second division at Orléans. Sport is a religion in the family, and little Lucas is also inspired by two older rugby brothers.
From the age of six onwards, he was drawn to soccer, following in the footsteps of Toulouse Football Club in Haute-Garonne. But in the land of ovalie, the round ball was no match for rugby, and the teenager went on to found a supporters' club for US Colomiers in the suburbs of the Occitanie prefecture. It was at secondary school, when he entered seventh grade - the presumed age of reason - that he discovered badminton, playing with friends who were not disabled.
A meteoric rise
From then on, everything happened very quickly. He was not yet seventeen, in 2014, when he conquered his first continental Para badminton crown, in Murcia, Spain. In addition, a bronze medal in mixed doubles completed his initial collection. Two years later, he brought home three gold medals from the European Championships in Beek, Netherlands. Then three more at the next edition (2018), closer to home, in Rodez, Aveyron.
If the Covid epidemic prevents major events from being held, Lucas will resume his good habits at the European Games in Rotterdam in 2023. In the meantime, the 2016 "Handisport Player of the Year" has taken on a whole new dimension, collecting the finest metals on every international stage. World champion three times as an individual, in 2017, 2019 and 2022, he was crowned in 2021 with the Olympic title in Tokyo.
An unprecedented conquest enhanced by a silver medal with his loyal mixed doubles partner for almost a decade now. A metal he could well see himself turning to gold this summer at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Provided he can also take revenge, in the SL4 singles, on his new Indian rival Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj, who knocked him off his world pedestal in February in Pattaya, Thailand.
A hegemony to be confirmed
A source of motivation, if need be, to multiply the strengths of our cador of the discipline, who doesn't like to be challenged, no matter how small (his pet peeve). And to pass the time, despite his ten daily specific training sessions between Chambly (Oise) and Bordeaux (Gironde), Lucas Mazur indulges his latest passion... on the golf green. Another form of preparation and a way of clearing his head for the interested party, who leaves no stone unturned. A truly insatiable and hyperactive athlete!