2024-01-27 19:57:52
Non-ordinary driver. This is the slogan and philosophy of Axel Alletru who will become the first paraplegic to take the start of the Enduropale du Touquet, Sunday February 4, 2024. Became paraplegic at the age of 20 following a fall during the championships of world of MX2 motocross 2010 in Latvia, Axel Alletru has not abandoned the world of motor sports that he loves so much and has even launched into new disciplines such as disabled swimming with 12 French championship titles to his name and a European champion title, without forgetting the Dakar 2020. A life journey, an extraordinary mentality and resilience that Axel shares through conferences aimed at businesses. A few days before his new challenge, meeting with Alex Alletru.
Bruno Cammalleri: You have participated in competitions in several disciplines including motocross, rally raid, swimming… where does your passion for motor sports come from?
Axel Alletru : I fell into this passion when I was little: I saw my father riding and it made me want to ride too. I very quickly wanted to get on a motorcycle. This is how my story began! Very often, when we have an uncle, a brother, a father who rides a motorcycle, we immediately want to imitate them and ride too.
Bruno Cammalleri: Your passion for motor sports took you to the Dakar in 2020 in the SSV category…
Axel Alletru : Yes indeed, I finished in 7th place in the general classification of the SSV category and I won in the T4 category! This 2020 adventure was a big project that required a lot of funds that I was able to raise. For my 2024 challenge, the Enduropale du Touquet, I have the chance to know the environment better and to have good contacts. So it’s a lot easier on this adventure. In 2020 I launched into the unknown because I didn’t know the Dakar. We launched the slogan and the hashtag #JEPEUX2020, and today we are once once more setting off on an adventure and we are relaunching the hashtag which this time is called #JEPEUX2024.
Bruno Cammalleri: Why are you launching into the Enduropale du Touquet 2024?
Axel Alletru : First of all, the Enduropale du Touquet has always been a race that I have followed a lot, but unfortunately I was never able to participate in it because at the time I was not of the required age given that you had to be 18 years old. It remained a regret in my life not to have been able to participate. It’s a huge event that brings together 400,000 spectators on average, or even more over the entire weekend. It’s a big weekend in the north and it’s an event whose notoriety goes beyond the world of motorcycles. For me the objective will above all be to have fun because being at the start is already a huge victory. From the day I was told that I would never walk once more to today being at the start of the Enduropale du Touquet in 2024… it’s something quite extraordinary! However, if above all I want to have fun, the objective will evolve as the race progresses. If I can do more I will, and if I can’t I won’t. In any case, being at the start with the able-bodied is still crazy!
Bruno Cammalleri: How do you prepare for such a race?
Axel Alletru : Before such a race you have to evaluate every detail. It’s a project that for me has been in the works for 2 years and therefore requires a lot of preparation. I am lucky to be very well surrounded by people I trust and people who know me from back then. So already when we start like this we know that we are not starting from zero because mentally we are eliminating a lot of problems. There is of course a lot of physical work, then I have a team that takes care of the bike and a team around me on marketing and communication. Everyone has their well-defined role. I often say that a victory is collective because it is together that we move forward and remove all the obstacles that we may encounter on such a project.
Bruno Cammalleri: In your conferences where you share your life experience and your journey as a high-level athlete, you talk a lot regarding mental preparation with concepts like visualization or resilience. Can you tell us more regarding these concepts?
Axel Alletru : In sport as an athlete we use mental preparation which is a derivative of visualization. I used visualization during my rehabilitation and it worked well. We don’t know at what level but it worked. In all my projects I try to do creative visualization where the goal is to project oneself. How does it work ? You must visualize the moment you want to achieve, 3 times 3 minutes a day, with a mental image of the challenge or project in question. And it’s not easy to repeat this visualization every day at this frequency of 3 times 3 minutes, but it has been proven that this technique can lead to concrete results.
Visualization works in both professional and personal settings. Implementing visualization within a company works. I also talk a lot regarding resilience in all my conferences: as long as you have not accepted a failure or a situation that blocks you in the past, you will never be able to move forward on a new objective. Resilience means accepting a given situation to free yourself from the poisonous past in order to emerge from it. Ultimately, this allows us to move forward rather than staying stuck in the past and in a form of “it was better before”. If we tell ourselves that it was better before, we will never be able to move forward! Of course this principle can be transposed into the business sphere where we can face crises, budget cuts, etc. on a daily basis. We must be able to cope with these changes by finding solutions, without being blocked. in the past because the competitor will surely understand the market and innovate in relation to these changes to continue to perform and maintain a growth dynamic.
Bruno Cammalleri: Who are the partners who support you and how do you seek them out?
Axel Alletru : I am lucky to have partners who support me in my challenges. These are partners that make sense on a daily basis, like Isseo Assurances. This is an insurer in the disability field. It must be said that people with disabilities always have difficulty obtaining insurance given the financial cost or the adaptations which are not necessarily insured… Isseo Assurances has taken this niche and assumes responsibility for insuring the equipment of people with disabilities. disability (the ramp, the accelerator, the handbrake, etc.) with a much lower penalty than for traditional insurance. Faced with increasingly high costs, the partnership with Isseo Assurances really makes sense to me. Furthermore, I also have this speaker’s hat which is of great interest because I am often asked to share my story with internal company employees. Some companies may join me because they will like the story and the associated values. We then try to create a common message together. If it matches, companies can join the adventure according to each person’s budget. I give around fifty conferences a year and this helps me finance my projects.
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