Louis Vuitton [Extended] — EP17 — Timothée Adolphe on Achieving Dreams and Disability Inclusion

The Olympics represent something very special. You might win the World Championships ten times over, but if you don’t get an Olympic medal, people will kind of think you’ve failed. Hello, I am Loïc Prigent, you are listening to Louis Vuitton Extended, the podcast. This is the third episode in our series dedicated to sportspeople. Today, I met up with the vision-impaired athlete Timothée Adolphe, who told me all about his career, the challenges of getting into elite sport for disabled people, the man who changed the course of his life and the stuff he gets up to outside of sport. He’s a Louis Vuitton ambassador and an incredibly inspiring guy. Hi Timothée Adolphe, thanks for being with us today. Hello! How are you? I’m good, how are you? I’m great. I’m really pleased to be chatting with you today. Well, same here! Can you tell us about how you first got into sport? Yeah, it all started when I was five or six and I got massively into basketball. I was really lucky, the first match I saw was between the Bulls and Lakers, this was in the 1990s Jordan era. I was already vision-impaired back then, my vision was just barely 5%. Basketball clubs would think the insurance was going to cost them a fortune. So I couldn’t find a club to take me on and every time I tried to get into sport, I hit a wall of people saying “no, we can’t do it”, or just “we don’t want to”, or “I’m not properly trained for it” - just a load of pathetic excuses, basically. That was until 1999, when I watched the Athletics World Championships, like I did every summer, they were in Seville that year. The Spanish had this great idea of putting on the Paralympic sports as a demonstration event. So there I was at age 10, watching the vision-impaired 200-meter event, which is a guided event. And from that age on, I’d tell everyone who’d listen, “it’s going to be a piece of cake, I’m going to be the world champion and Olympic champion one day”. Obviously everyone would laugh, because I had no idea how much hard work it would take. You don’t realise that. But I was determined and I’d made up my mind that I was going to do athletics. So a few weeks later I went to my local club. I was quite worried about it, because every time I’d tried to get into sport, my parents supported me, but we came up against a brick wall, like I said. But that day was the first time someone welcomed me with open arms, they were like “no problem, little man, we know absolutely nothing about disability or disability sport, but come in and we’ll make sure you can do it like any other kid.” and that’s exactly what they did. I couldn’t see the lanes for sprinting practice, but I could see the measuring line right at the edge of the track because it’s thicker. So, they said “no problem, we’ll make sure you get the first lane, it’s yours - no one wants that one anyway. So you can have it. “Do you like hurdling?” I couldn’t see the hurdles. “Ok, but you can see the fluorescent strips we’ve put in front of the hurdles? Perfect, we’ll put them there, so you know when to jump.” “Oh, you can’t see the board for the long jump? No problem.” y coach was an ex-soldier and he brought his fluorescent orange rescue bandana, which was enough to catch my eye, no pun intended, so I knew when to jump so I wouldn’t fall flat on my face. I couldn’t see the bar for the high jump. They were like “that’s ok, just come touch it beforehand so you can visualise it, then go back and do your run-up.” Did that work? Yeah, the only time I couldn’t see well enough was for the cross-country, I couldn’t see the cordon that marked out the track. So, I had a guide. I was guided through the cross-country when I was starting out, between the ages of 10 and 13. On the running track, I could see enough, my vision was only 5% but I made the absolute most of it. So it was fine. We moved house when I was 13 and nowhere wanted to take on partially sighted runners. It was so bad that when I wanted to start doing it again, I went to this club that claimed it was open to disabled people, when I was at school in Angers, I was about 15 or 16 years old, and they said, “I’m not going to waste my time on a blind person”. So I went off and cried, and then I thought “OK, never mind, athletics doesn’t want anything to do with me, I’ll do something else instead”. So, music sort of became my solace, and so did another sport called torball. Then when I was 20 or 21, I got into athletics again because I was chatting with a mate of mine and telling him I missed it, I wanted to do it again and all that, and he was like “go to Charléty! The Paris Université Club has a disabled section with quite a few vision impaired people. At least give it a try.” So that’s what I did. One evening in January 2011, I went to Charléty and asked to speak to the disabled sports officer. That’s when I met Arthémon Hatungimana. Arthémon won the silver medal in the 800 metres at the 1995 World Championships, he finished just after Kipketer, who was a bit of an 800 metres legend in the 90s, he was the sport’s Usain Bolt. He was running for Burundi back then and he came to France in ’93. He got French nationality in 2005 and decided to coach for France. I had no idea who he was then. Or what he’d done. And there was me, going on about how I couldn’t see a thing, but I wanted to run the 100 and 200 metres. The next day, he was going off to the World Championships in New Zealand as he was coaching the French Paralympic team, and he said to me “speak to me in a month when I’m back, I’ll find you a guide and we’ll take it from there”. And he kept his word. He found me a guide and we started working together. After two or three months, I broke the French 800-meter record and I got medals at the French Championships for the 100, 200, 400 and 800-meter. That’s how the story started. Then Arthémon became my coach, and he got me to the very top. He was my coach for 11 years. You have a spectacular record. What’s been your favourite medal? I don’t really have a favourite. I’ve had some amazing times, so there are naturally some that are really special to me. Usually my firsts. Like when I got my first international medal. My bronze at the World Championships in 2013. That was in Lyon, so it was in France, and it took everyone by surprise apart from my coach and guide, no one saw me coming, this scrawny little guy, because I was 15 kilos lighter than I am now. And I’m not big to this day. You’re not that small, you’re about 1 meter 80...? 84. Right They called me “the arrow” back then. So that was my first international medal, and it... Did it feel like payback? Not payback... But I was a total outsider. Nobody thought I was a contender. Just getting into the final was a bit... People were like “who’s this guy?”. You know? Then the year after that, I sealed the deal when I won two European Championship medals. That was my first European title and I won it by a hundredth of a second. Do you remember your exact time? Yeah, this was in the 200-meter, and it was the day after I was disqualified from the European finals because my guide did a false start. So, it was an emotional rollercoaster. I ran it in 23.9 seconds, and second place ran it in 23.91. There was something really special about that medal. And not just because it was my first European title. As I said, it was an emotional rollercoaster, especially as I wasn’t annoyed with my guide because he did a false start the day before in the 100-meter finals or whatever, we stuck together. We tried to figure out what went wrong. The thing is... You’re desperate to run. As soon as the starter says “set”, your animal instincts kick in, you’re like “go, go, go, fire that gun”. But the starter took an unusually long time and my guide reacted just before the gun, so we got red carded and that was that. Who was your guide? Back then it was Cédric Felip. What was he like? What qualities do you need to be a guide? You have to be a very good athlete. You need to be well coordinated because you have to do particular exercises and you can’t be all over the place. You need good hand-eye coordination and all that, the two of you, as you’re moving in an athletic way as you have to synchronise with the runner. You need to sync up in a technically sound way. And then there’s the personal side of things. Interpersonal skills, you mean? You have to be a good listener because, with guiding, you have your strong points and I have mine, and you have to combine the two so you have your strong points as a duo. It’s like mixing two essential oils. You mix them and they bring out the good things in each other so you get a nice mixture, a kind of synergy. What about the weak points? You try to get rid of any weak points, that’s sort of your job as an athlete. You work on your technique to get rid of all your little technical weakness, although you can’t get rid of them completely. But you want them to affect your performance as little as possible. So you have to be a good match as people, and you become really close, you’re a bit like brothers, so you have to be a good fit for each other. Who’s your guide now? I’ve got a few. I’ve got Jeffrey Lami, who’s been guiding me for the 400-meter since 2017. And to go back to the question you asked me before about my most important medals, Jeffrey and I got our first World Championship title in 2019, which kind of surprised everyone, as the race was pretty bonkers. How so? Did you have to come from behind? Yeah, you’d have to see it to believe it, we were in last place 120 meters from the finish line, but we got gold. What happened? Did the sun come out? No, actually it was the only time in my career when I let my emotions get the better of me. I beat the world record holder the day before when I qualified for the finals and it took it out of me, I was a bit tired when the finals came around and I couldn’t feel anything when I was warming up. I was tired, I felt like my legs were gone, I had no energy. You were physically tired? Yeah, I wasn’t feeling it at all. You feel a very specific kind of stress before the 400-meter. You get a buildup of lactic acid in the 400-meter, so it hurts. Only you don’t know when the pain’s going to hit you. At the end of the first 200-meter, Jeffrey actually said to me, “Are you done? Because I did pretty much the slowest 200-meter I’d ever done in my career.” Did he have a word with you? Yeah, he was like “can we try a bit harder?”. So he went for it and he could see I was keeping up, so he thought we might not get the gold but we can aim for bronze. Although he didn’t say that to me at the time. And we got into third and he was like “he’s not as tired as all that, he’s talking rubbish”. And he sped up one last time to see if I would respond and he could see that I did, and we got the gold right on the finish line, we won in 50.91 seconds and second place was 50.96, so it was extremely close. The 100-meter medal is my only Paralympic medal. I got Paralympic silver in the 100-meter and I set the second quickest time in history, the world record was 10.92 seconds and before the finals at the Tokyo Games we did 10.9. I was running with Bruno Naprix back then. A Greek guy has run it faster since, in 10.82 seconds, so I’m out for revenge this summer in Paris. What’s it like to win a Paralympic medal? It’s not like you’re on another level to everyone else, but the Paralympics are the ultimate goal. Even if it’s not gold, you know that a Paralympic medal is still going to change your career. You’re an athlete, and for athletes the Games represent something special. You might win the World Championships ten times over, but if you don’t get an Olympic medal, people will kind of think you’ve failed. Oh really? Yeah. If you win ten World Championships but you take nothing home from the Games, people will think something’s gone wrong. So how does it work? Does the guide join you on the podium or is that not how it’s done? That’s actually something new. Before 2008, guides weren’t allowed onto the podium. 2008 was the first time. Guides now get the same prize money as the athletes. Paralympians have had the same prize money as Olympians since 2008. Guides have had the same prize money, they can get on the podium and get a medal since 2012 So it’s only happened recently. What lessons have you learned from your career that we could apply to our own daily lives, do you think? The expression I’ve always lived by is “don’t dream about your life, live your dreams”. I’m living the dreams I had as a little kid, and I’ve even done things I would never have imagined, amazing things. You often have to get over hurdles if you want to make your dreams happen. You might not achieve them, but at least you won’t have any regrets, because you tried. I do all kinds of things in sport and outside of sport, I can do whatever I want. How can people overcome barriers in their life? How can we rise above them? Because you’ve certainly had a few... Even to practice my sport, I have faced a lot of barriers, I lost my sight, and I’ve had to change my career plans because of my disability. And I’ve been disqualified a few times in my career. The rules around guided running are extremely strict, unfortunately. For example, Jeffrey and I were world and European champions when we got to Tokyo, and we were the favourites for the 400-meter, but we got disqualified because the tether fell out of his hand 40 centimetres before the finish line, even though we were 15 metres ahead of everyone else. The rule says “The tether’s got to be in place when you cross the line”. It was obvious that he didn’t drop it on purpose, it fell out of his hand because it was 40 degrees in the middle of the day, the humidity is so high that your hands are soaked, the tether slipped out and it wasn’t fair. He was slowing down, he was going behind me because the rule is that I have to cross the line first, and it was while he did that that the tether slipped, but... You couldn’t appeal? No, there are no appeals when you’re disqualified that way. In 2017, I lost the World Championship title because my guide’s shoulder was ahead of mine by three-thousandths of a meter. Does it drive you mad? Yeah, it does, you cry your eyes out. It’s an emotional rollercoaster. Don’t forget that first they tell you you’ve won, and it’s another three-quarters of an hour, an hour, maybe an hour and a half before you’re disqualified, 58 so you’ve got enough time to cry tears of joy in your mother’s arms because you’re world champion, and do interviews. To give you another example, I nearly cracked up in 2018 because I won the 200-meter at the European Championships. I am European Champion! I started doing interviews, I had the time to go for a drink with my family before the ceremony, but just as I was about to get my medal, they say “you shouldn’t be here”. I’m like, “what do you mean? I won!” And they say “yeah, mate, you had your number on your back, not your front”. What?! Exactly. All because of a shirt number. And the rules even backed me up, they say it’s the adjudicators’ job to make sure the athletes are in the right kit. Only no one told me I didn’t have my number on right. But you couldn’t appeal? We did complain. France asked for an exemption. They spent 18 hours 30 minutes deliberating from 8pm on Friday to 2.30pm on Saturday, but in the end they said the German adjudicators wouldn’t admit they’d made a mistake, so the disqualification stands. What’s your nickname? The snow leopard. How did you get it? Arthémon gave it to me. Like I said, I used to be 15 kilos lighter and one of my strengths is that I’m very coordinated. So the day before my first international final, Arthémon took me to one side and said “Listen, tomorrow you’re not going to be a lion, you’re too skinny for that - you’re going to be a snow leopard”. And the name stuck. How did you react at the time? I laughed, but I was really touched because it was a big moment for me. I could feel he believed in me and he really meant what he said. Does he often speak like a wise old man? Yes, Arthémon has lots of... He talks to you a lot and he uses a lot of imagery and proverbs, stuff like that from Burundian culture. The images he conjures up are very meaningful and impactful. And inspiring. Yeah, massively inspiring. So what does TSL stand for? It stands for Team Snow Leopard. The team has come together over time as I only had one guide at first. Then we realised that you need two or three, maybe even four or five sometimes. So we’re a real team. Can you tell me a bit about how disability sports are categorised and the different disciplines? Am I right that you’re in T11? That’s right, the T stands for track. Then the number tells you what type of disability the athlete has. So 1 is vision impairment, 2 is mental, 3 is hemiplegia, cerebral palsy and so on. 4 is for people who’ve had legs and arms amputated. 5 is wheelchair users. 6 is for amputees who wear blades, which are prostheses. Then the lower the second number, the more severe the disability. People with vision impairment have three categories, T11, T12 and T13. T13 is for people who are mildly impaired and can run without a guide. They get one lane. T12 athletes are much more impaired and they get two lanes. They can choose whether or not they want to run with a guide. And T11s have less than 1% sight, something like that, or they’re blind like me, so we have to run with a guide. During the race, we run with our guide and we wear completely opaque eye patches, so it’s fair. Am I right that you were T12 but you became T11? No, I’ve been T11 for my whole career. How long is it now until the Paralympics? It’s... Do you count in hours or days? Or weeks? No, we’re still counting in months, there are three and a half months to go. How will your mindset ramp up, or maybe wind down, I’m not sure? No it’s definitely going to ramp up, because we’re getting closer to the big day, so at the moment we’re focussing more on preparation, we’re not quite on the final straight, but it’s getting closer and closer. I’ve already qualified, so for the 100 and 400-meter my goal isn’t qualification or getting a certain time or selection or whatever, I’m focussing on improvement. The first thing you try to do in competitions is reproduce what you worked on in training. You just practise, practise, practise so you’re as ready as you can be on the day. People often think the 100-meter is just running as fast as you can, but it’s actually extremely technical. You pay for every tiny mistake. So every time you do a practice competition, you analyse what went well and what didn’t, and gradually you try to correct the things that didn’t work. Do you have access to a lot of data these days? Yes, we have research assistants who work with us on our performance every day. So, for example, I sometimes run the 400-meter wearing a GPS tracker during competitions these days, so we can analyse the race down to a tenth of a second and we can know if I’ve started too quick or too fast, for instance, or we can see when I’ve started to slow down. Is that helpful? Yeah. Video analysis can give us certain information too. The way the guide or athlete feels can tell us something, so can the coach, but other things bring scientific fact to the equation. You’ve spoken about disability issues and the importance of developing inclusive projects. Can you tell me about blind basketball? Yeah, blind basketball is one of the projects I’m going to start when my career’s over. Basketball was the first sport I really loved. But there’s no blind version. We’ve been able to adapt football to people with vision impairment, so I’m sure we can do it. I’ve got some rough ideas. That’s why I want to try basketball, because I’m sure we can do it, and I’m sure we can do handball too. Is it so that the next little Timothée who wants to play will have the chance to do it? That’s the goal - that vision impaired people who want to do sport aren’t limited to a handful of options and don’t have to say “ oh damn, I’d like to play basketball but I can’t”. Can you tell us about your video game? Absolutely. It’s fresh news because it came out last year. It is called Timmy Team Racing. It’s the first video game aimed at all audiences that people with any disability can use. The reason we largely focused on vision impairment wasn’t because I’m blind, it’s because most people in the team have a sensory disability, some of them have impaired sight and hearing. So it’s the impairment we know best. We’ve worked on others too though. The user feedback has helped us to adapt it and put in place other things for other disabilities. But it’s the first game that’s essentially for the general public to be suitable for people with vision impairment. That’s only very recently become possible on consoles and it was a world first on mobiles. You also do standup comedy and music. I do, yeah. Which of them lets you express yourself the best, or the most? They’re completely different from one another. I’ve been playing music for 20, 21 years now, whereas I’ve only been doing standup for a few years, so I relate to them differently and I’m still learning standup. My style of music is rap and I’ve done a few tracks where I’ve bigged myself up, stuff based on old-school punchlines and all that. I’ve also had a go at rap battles, which I’ve loved. It’s a type of rap I really like. Do you enjoy the competitive element? Yeah, actually, whether you’re talking about sport, hip-hop or standup, they all share that element of performance. And you’re sharing or communicating with other people. What I mean is, thinking about why I got into rap, it was the writing that drew me in, all the different messages rap can give really spoke to me. In that case, we’re in luck. Enzo Lefort and Antoine Dupont both wanted to ask you a question about music. Enzo asks whether you’re going to release a new track soon. I will, and there might even be a video to go with it. No way! Yeah, I made a video a bit back so I’ve been meaning to put it out for a while. To be honest I’m trying to find the right time because it’s a great video and I don’t want it to get lost among loads of other stuff, so we’re waiting for the right time. The timing’s got to be right. Yeah. There you go, Enzo, it’ll be soon but we’re not sure when. Now to Antoine Dupont, who’s a lovely guy with a wicked sense of humour. He asks whether you’d prefer a gold medal or a Grammy. Both are amazing, but it’d be a gold medal. These days I’d definitely say the gold medal. Without a doubt! Is there a question you’d like to ask our next guest on the podcast, Léon Marchand? Yeah, absolutely. I believe Léon is also into flying, so he’s as comfortable in the air as he is in the water, which are two completely different elements. Do the two of them ever feel similar? Good question! Thank you, Timothée! Thank you! I think I’ve cracked it. I’m finally starting to relax around top sportspeople. I’m still amazed at how you can spend years and years practising for the 100-meter and it’s over in seconds. It blows my mind. And the strength of character you’d have to have to get over the shirt number incident, you’d have to be superhuman. That’s what you call optimism. Thank you for listening to this episode of Louis Vuitton Extended, the podcast. I’ll be inviting you soon to discover new stories in the company of visionary personalities. Find all the episodes on your favorite listening platforms such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You should subscribe to the podcast to get notifications so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes. I look forward to welcome you back.