New Delhi marks sprinter Dimitri Jozwicki’s first step towards Los Angeles

Fourth-fastest in the world this season in the T38 100m, US Tourcoing Athlétisme sprinter Dimitri Jozwicki is chasing his first international medal at this weekend’s World Para Athletics Championships, held on 27 and 28 September. After finishing fifth in Paris last year, a result he calls a “privileged disappointment”, the occupational therapist discusses his return to competition, his love of public speaking and, naturally, the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles.

The World Championships in New Delhi will be your fifth. Your best result came in Kobe, Japan, in May 2024, when you finished three hundredths of a second off the podium. What are your ambitions in India?

I’m determined to turn those near-misses into something more. I’ve been hovering around fourth and fifth place for a few years now, including in Paris in 2023. I’m currently fourth on the season list with 10.99, behind Americans Jaydin Blackwell and Ryan Medrano and Britain’s Thomas Young, so I’m going there to win a medal. I’m in pretty good shape and feeling confident. In my view, it will come down to whoever manages to put the most pieces together on the day.

You spent part of the summer training in Marie-Galante. Did you change anything in your preparation?

It was my first time in Guadeloupe. The main difference, inevitably, is the length of the season. We really had to plan for that. Not having an indoor season also gave me the chance to decompress after the Paris Games, where I finished fifth in 11.13, and take time to process everything. The season has been going since January. Other than that, I haven’t changed my training methodology. The bigger change has been psychological. I’ve had far less pressure than I experienced in Paris, at least throughout the overall build-up to the Games. I’m more relaxed about going to a World Championships in New Delhi.

After an inconsistent season, including a bout of tendinitis, you retained your French title on 12 July in Belfort. You ran 10.99, behind Axel Zorzi’s 10.85 on the clock, but beat him on points, 1,118 to 1,086. That must have been a huge relief.

The qualifying standard was genuinely difficult to hit. It was 11.07 for the A standard, with the B standard set at 11.31. In my classification, T38, for athletes with mild limitations affecting movement and coordination in the lower body and trunk, that equates to a top-20 performance of all time. Even though I was regularly close to 11.00 last year, 11.10 isn’t 11.07. Nor is 11.09. You have to actually produce the time. I did it very early in the season, running 11.00 at the ASA-Thop Meeting in Maisons-Alfort on 11 May 2025. We were asked to be in form for our main event at the French Championships. So naturally, I was prepared and had trained for it. But when 10.99 came up, it reassured me not only about making the team, but also about my ability to get back under 11 seconds and post times that could put me in medal contention in New Delhi. Given that the season has been a bit of a mixed bag because of minor physical issues, those times were a real pleasure to see. And winning the French title as well was a lovely bonus. I’m trying to approach these World Championships with the same composure I had at the French Championships.

If we are recognised as high-performing athletes on the track, based on our results, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be recognised as people, employees, students, fathers, mothers or contributors to society too.
Dimitri Jozwicki, on how society views disability

Timothée Adolphe, a two-time Paralympic silver medallist in Paris in the 100m and 400m, told our colleagues at STADION-ACTU that the Games had failed to leave a legacy, while Rosario Murcia-Gangloff, who finished just off the marathon podium, takes a more nuanced view. She says the public’s attitude towards para sport has changed. Where do you stand?

They’ve both said everything that needs saying. Clearly, when you compare things with the no man’s land that existed before the Paris 2024 Games, it’s better. But when you compare it with what was promised in terms of legacy, promoting para sport and sport in general, only fragments remain. There was a Day of Sport on 14 September last year, paying tribute to the parade we took part in on the Champs-Élysées. But on the other hand, we now have a World Championships in New Delhi that isn’t even being broadcast on television. It will be incredibly low-profile and watched only by our families or people who follow us on social media and find the links through our stories. The press isn’t talking about it. And I don’t think the broadcasting rights would cost a fortune, even if sending a team out there isn’t possible. As far as legacy goes, it was great to have the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games covered around the clock. But the people who discovered these sports during the Games and would like to watch them again won’t necessarily all have the time or the means to find the information and watch a YouTube livestream, especially as the event is taking place in New Delhi in the middle of September.

Could placing para athletes within the same sports federations as non-disabled athletes be one way to encourage young people to take up sport and improve working conditions for professional athletes like you?

It’s an endless debate. Unfortunately, we athletes may not necessarily have much say in it. It’s highly political. It could be useful to have a dedicated para-sport federation for sports that are particularly specialised. Bringing the federations together could work if it allowed the French Para-Sports Federation to continue operating and provide expertise on the ground, potentially with suitably qualified support staff. It might also give athletes access to greater resources, because the federation currently oversees both summer and winter Paralympic sports, with a single budget divided among the various French teams. When you have to split the budget according to results, the Games and the previous Paralympic cycle, there are limits to how much the sport can develop. But there also has to be a genuine commitment on the other side, if we are taken in by a mainstream federation, to developing para sport. It can’t simply be window dressing or a way for that federation to promote itself, while the disabled athlete gains nothing from the arrangement.

You give a great many talks. Can those conversations help change attitudes towards para sport?

Outside the sporting world, it’s still a very stigmatising environment for disabled people. Your career is often limited because of your disability, or your chances of being hired are reduced, because of all the images and stereotypes attached to it. Through these talks, the idea is to dismantle that image by discussing the history of disability in France, the different types of disability and the inclusion of disabled people. If we are recognised as high-performing athletes on the track, based on our results, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be recognised as people, employees, students, fathers, mothers or contributors to society too. Our disability doesn’t define us, just as it didn’t define us during the Games, when performance was used to showcase our disability rather than the other way around. If the public was able to make that shift during the Games, there’s no reason the same shift can’t happen throughout society.

The Paris Games, which I had been preparing for over seven years. When you spend seven years pursuing that dream, the Paralympic dream, moving up step by step, you first become more consistent in your performances. Then you get better and better until you’re regularly in the world top three, or even top of the rankings, in your classification. You start dreaming, allowing yourself to dream about winning that medal at home. And then, in reality, it doesn’t happen, because it’s still just one 100m race. It wasn’t remotely embarrassing, but it didn’t come off on the day, and I finished fifth in 11.13. There was huge disappointment. It was hard to swallow, and it lasted a long time, because I didn’t necessarily process it straight away. We were surrounded by a festive, shared atmosphere for a long time. You only realise it’s over and in the past when you return to the monotony of everyday life. And ultimately, the role you’ll play for the longest time in your life isn’t that of the athlete going to the Games, or the athlete competing at the Games, but the athlete who has been to the Games. It’s a privileged disappointment, if I can put it that way, to miss out on a home Games. I’m still incredibly grateful for what I experienced. It’s a nuanced feeling. I’m very happy I got to experience the Paris Games. But from a sporting perspective, there will inevitably be a bitter taste.

American Jaydin Blackwell won the Paralympic title in Paris in 10.64, ahead of compatriot Ryan Medrano in 10.97. Will you line up at a third Games with the aim of winning that title on American soil in 2028?

That’s the ultimate goal, of course. Right now, my driving force is about finding new sources of motivation. When you’ve been motivated for seven years and the engine was the chance to experience a unique sporting event at home, it’s obvious that the next source of motivation is hard to find. What could be more exciting in an elite athlete’s career than competing at your home Games and winning them? There aren’t many opportunities like that. I asked myself how I could motivate myself. Then it came to me quite naturally, very soon after the disappointment of Paris 2024. I thought the driving force could be going to take back from the Americans what they came to take from us in Paris, a fair exchange. That’s the goal, and I’m not ashamed to say it out loud. I know my sport, I know myself, I know I’m capable of it, and I have to find a way to bring out my best. First comes New Delhi, the first step in rebuilding and finding that motivation.

The 28-year-old athlete from Pont-à-Mousson is clear-eyed about the current situation in France and the legacy of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Through his results, his profession and his public speaking, he hopes to shift public attitudes. It is a triple life built around one idea: “performance” and “disability” can stand on equal footing.