Olympic Games Paris 2024

One year to go until the Paralympic Games Paris 2024 | Dimitri Pavadé, Torch Relay captain: “I started from nothing and I’ll carry the flame!”

By Florian Bouhier
4 min|
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Paralympic silver medallist in long jump and Paris 2024 Torch Relay captain, Dimitri Pavadé did not expect to have such a successful career but destiny proved otherwise.

Thursday 13 July and the sixth day of 2023 World Para Athletics Championships was beginning in Paris with a stunning show from renowned French singer, Amel Bent.

Dimitri Pavadé, the Tokyo 2020 silver medallist in long jump (T64), is in the stadium but cannot participate because of a knee injury, nevertheless he is there to support the French team.

A month before, he was chosen by the Paris 2024 Organising Committee as one of the captains of the Olympic and Paralympic Torch Relay, alongside Olympic champion siblings, swimmers Laure Manaudou and her brother Florent Manaudou as well as Mona Francis, European champion in para triathlon.

“I never imagined this destiny,” he told Olympics.com in Charléty Stadium. “Or dreamed of it. It came out of nowhere. What I live today, it’s an extraordinary thing and I want to continue this journey.”

Not too bad for “some random guy” who radiates such positive energy it allowed him to break more than one barrier.

READ ALSO: Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Torch Relay: The torchbearer selection process begins

“Do you want to do sport?”

If everybody smiles at Dimitri Pavadé, it’s because he smiles his way through life, even in dark times.

“I always take the good sides of things, even when I’m not well. I’ve always been someone joyful, smiling and sharing my good mood.”

This state of mind helped him overcome some tough moments.

In 2007, Dimitri is 18. He lives in Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean that is a French overseas territory, in a “small and normal family”.

“We didn’t have money. My mother is a housemaid and my father was a bricklayer.”

So Dimitri has to find a job. “In December 2007, I started a docker job and twelve days later, I had my accident. An eighteen-tonne forklift truck rolled on my leg. My life changed dramatically.”

But Dimitri doesn’t fall into a depression and after an amputation below the knee of his right leg, he decides to move from Réunion to mainland France and start a course as a prosthetist to learn to create and fit artificial replacements for patients who are missing a limb.

But what about sport?

Pavadé used to work out and do “crazy stuff” with friends on bicycles when he was in Réunion, but nothing more than that.

However, he was fast. And he just needed a small help from destiny.

“During my internship, I met the CEO and he saw [my] musculature and dynamism. He asked me: ‘Do you want to do sport? Do you want to run?’ This is how I started para athletics.

"He told me he supported the guy who ran the company workshop and he made it to the Barcelona 1992 Paralympics. He never met someone who gave him the will to do it again until he met me in 2015. I became an elite athlete thanks to him. He gave me everything.”

He’s 27 when he starts his athletics career. “I started late. I’m young in competition but old in age. There is no age to perform,” he said.

But how did he manage to become vice-world champion only three years later?

Dimitri Pavadé: A perfect ambassador

“I didn’t realise I was improving in the elite sport world. I was seeing those competitions as small ones where I enjoyed myself. That’s it,” he explained with his signature casualness.

But what a success.

Barely one year after his debut in para sport, he wins two gold medals at the 2017 Francophone Games, in the 200m and long jump events.

“I was with French team, that was cool. Everything was paid for and that was another world. I had no idea.”

Everything changed in Dubai at the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships.

“The catalyst was when I jumped 7.25m and I became vice-world champion. That day I realised it was serious as the next year it was the Paralympic Games. This medal made me cry. This is the only one that made me cry.”

In Tokyo 2020, he won silver in long jump, beating his personal best with a 7.39m mark, finishing behind German athlete Markus Rehm, a four-time Paralympic gold medallist.

“The reward of intense work, injuries, pain, sweat… everything was in this medal.”

Another goal soon arose: the Paralympic Opening Ceremony at a home Games.

“When I saw the athlete parade, the first thing I told myself was: ‘I want to be a flag bearer.”

Three years on from his Olympic silver and he has been chosen to be a Torchbearer and one of the captains of the Paris 2024 Torch Relay. “The Organising Committee called and asked me: ‘Do you want to be a Torchbearer? I couldn’t say no.”

Dimitri is amazed this dream has come true and is impatient for the moment to arrive.

“Carrying the torch during the relay, it’s crazy. Me, Dimitri Pavadé, who started from nothing, I’ll carry the flame. It’s exceptional!”

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