“The first thing that comes to my mind is that I definitely never saw an arena like this. The public supports everyone, not only the French judoka and that is just incredible.

From an organisation point of view, of course we faced challenges but, despite all the difficulties, all problems were solved in time and really everything is just perfect.

At the Paralympics, we can benefit from the Olympic Games that took place here in the same facility. If there were issues before, when we arrived, everything was running smoothly.

We have been working with very professional people and the collaboration was really smooth. From an IT point of view for instance, our shadow system is different from the one to run the competition but with some adaptation under the leadership of Matthias Fischer from the IJF IT department, we could find all the necessary solutions.

Alexandre’s (Alexandre Poutout, Para-Judo Sport Manager Paris 2024) team did an amazing job to oversee the whole organisation. It is not an easy task but they managed really well.

Talking about the sport, I was so happy to see many countries winning medals, including many ‘small’ countries. I could mention Greece or Sweden and many others.

The fact that we have the two categories now, J1 and J2, there is a real chance for medals for many athletes who could never reach the podium before. We have seen judoka on the circuit for many years who did not really have a chance before but now they can live their dream.

What we have seen in Paris is emotional, all tears and smiles. This is what we want and this is what we have here. I can really feel that this world is where all the athletes belong.”