“I will always find a way to slide on the waves, even when I am over 80,” smiles Ismaël Guilliorit. A surfing enthusiast, this 45-year-old from Royan is helping to democratize this intense discipline among disabled people, thanks in particular to the Vagdspérance association founded 20 years ago. Himself an amputee of his right leg at birth and a parasurfing pioneer, Ismaël Guilliorit has gained an extraordinary experience since his adolescence.
This love for waves and the ocean finally paid off last November: this father of three children actually won a silver medal at the parasurfing world championship! The eighth edition of this event was this year organized in Huntington Beach, a legendary spot located in California, in the United States. Ismaël Guilliorit had already participated in this championship between 2015 and 2017, before devoting himself to his children.
“Since then, my son and my twin daughters have grown up. So I decided to go back without pretension,” he explains. Faced with around twenty competitors entered in his category, Ismaël Guilliorit finally came out on top, “experience compensating for the power lost at my age”. Only a Brazilian – crowned for the second time – resisted the Royannais. “It was quite an adventure, a great trip,” confides the forty-year-old who claims to have been with surfing “well beyond [ses ] dreams.”
They call him Nilsen in Norway, his other country of heart
He took to the water at the age of 15 “with one ambition: to have fun”. At the time, people with motor and sensory disabilities were rare on the waves. Ismaël Guilliorit had to invent everything and grope around to find a prosthesis adapted to this sport and his handicap. “I struggled for 3 years. It took a lot of training, taming the ocean and developing my own technique,” he recalls. France now has up to 1,000 regular parasurfers.
During the last World Cup, Ismaël Guilliorit nevertheless chose to surf in the colors of Norway, his mother’s country. “It’s a choice from the heart and a nod to my mother. My entire maternal family lives there and I spent my holidays there when I was a child,” he emphasizes. It is therefore under the name of Nilsen – and the flag of Norway on his shoulders – that this parasurfer climbed the second step of the podium, happy to represent “the strong values” of his sport which he defends all the way to Royan.
Director of the Pontaillac mini-golf course, Ismaël Guilliorit does not yet know if he will compete in the parasurfing world championship again next year. His priority? Working on a book and an exhibition dedicated to this Californian “trip” – photographer Serg Dady has immortalized this adventure. Ismaël Guilliorit also intends to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his association Vagdspérance in 2024 and continue to train a new generation of parasurfers.
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