Beautiful atmosphere at Cosec which hosts a round of the French wheelchair football championship throughout the weekend. The premises of CHOC (Castres Handisport Olympique Club) face Saint-Etienne, Nîmes and Bordeaux in the hope of confirming the team’s retention in the third national division.
“We are very proud to welcome these clubs,” explains Florent, one of the CHOC volunteers. “The matches take place in two rounds of 15 minutes with 2 teams of 4 players.” At CHOC, the team is mixed and multigenerational. There we find Gabriel (11 years old), Gillian, Mathis, Sandra and Fabien (the veteran, aged 47).
The similarities with football are great with the only difference that the athletes ride in their electric wheelchairs instead of putting on crampons. But the philosophy of the game remains the same. “As in football, impacts are prohibited. For the sake of fairness, all players have the same chair, reinforced with metal bars and designed by an American. The matches take place on a field the size of a field basketball with a large ball of 33 cm in diameter, specific to our discipline. The players must have, as in professional football, good reflexes, combining precision and speed on both counts since it is a ball sport endowed with “mechanical aspect.”
Faced with the ogres from Stéphane, Bordeaux and Nîmes, the CHOC acts as Tom Thumb and fights to maintain its position. But the main thing is elsewhere: the club proves, with this beautiful Albigensian round, that it can host other events of this type. For the players, the next meeting is set in Bordeaux in May.
2024-03-17 04:32:47
#Albi #French #wheelchair #football #championship #Cosec
