70 kilometers on crutches in the desert… The great adventure of Pierre Borgella, a one-legged marathon runner from Bordeaux

Pierre Borgella, a one-legged athlete from Bordeaux, has just returned from Türkiye, where he ran 70 km on crutches. He was the only para-athlete to compete in this Marathon des Sables.

" It was the adventure of a lifetime." Pierre Borgella, a 23-year-old para-athlete, completed the Marathon des Sables in the Cappadocia desert in Turkey a few weeks ago. A feat he ran on crutches over 70 kilometers over four days... Having had his left leg amputated after a serious motorcycle accident when he was 17, the young man from Bagnères-de-Bigorre has never stopped playing sports. A "turbulent child," an amateur rugby player since his teenage years, he has always pushed his physical capabilities to the limits. This marathon was a new milestone for him, with a deep-seated desire to compete with able-bodied people.

His hands still red from antiseptic, the mark of blisters caused by running on crutches, Pierre recounts his feat with all humility. "If I succeeded in this ultra-trail, it's thanks to my cousin Léo, who accompanied me." Like their very close-knit family, the two young men have always been very "close." Nights in camps with the other marathoners, waking up at 4 a.m. to run before the strong heat, breaks every hour to hydrate... They shared everything during this ordeal.

"I stopped every five minutes. It must have been horrible for Léo," confides Pierre. His cousin waited for him throughout the race, a solidarity essential to complete the adventure. Because the challenges Pierre faced were numerous.

First, he had to work on his endurance. For four months, Pierre underwent training worthy of a top-level athlete: shoulder strengthening, three physiotherapy sessions per week, morning and afternoon workouts... A healthy level of athletic intensity. "Sports saved Pierre and continues to save him," his mother emphasizes.

A large black tiger tattooed on his skin reminds us: Pierre is fighting. Not so much against his disability and his prosthesis, which he has accepted ("it's a part of you, even if it's not human"), but against the prejudices that usually prevent him from competing with able-bodied athletes. "We often separate disabled athletes from able-bodied athletes: it annoys me, it's quite degrading." This realization became apparent very early on: after his accident, Pierre passed his baccalaureate, resumed swimming, and enrolled in a degree in Physical and Sports Activities Science and Technology (STAPS). That was the shock: of the eight sports he had to practice each week, only two were adapted to his disability.

So he joined a para-swimming club, and soon, a CrossFit club in the Landes region. In this sport combining weightlifting, gymnastics, and athletics, Pierre competed for the first time with able-bodied athletes. This is relatively rare: the events reserved for para-athletes are "neither in the same locations nor during the same periods" as the events for able-bodied athletes, thus preventing any "prominence for disabled sport," according to him.

Interested in the issue of disabled sports, which he addressed in a bachelor's thesis, Pierre regrets that already, "no one is talking about the 2024 Paralympic Games anymore." He mentions the lack of funding for clubs to make them more inclusive and the difficulty of accessing sports facilities for people with reduced mobility, recalling with irritation his visit to Paris for the Games, where "only line 14 was adapted for [him]." At the Marathon des Sables, Pierre was the only athlete with a disability. The same goes for his CrossFit club. He copes with it, on the front line to campaign for equality for all athletes, whether they live with a disability or not.