Aure­lien Vauquelin, a 40-year-old mecha­tron­ics grad­u­ate engi­neer from UTC, was able to achieve a first in the his­to­ry of the Tour de France: com­pet­ing in the final stage with the able-bodied.

“I had the chance to talk to Chris­t­ian Prud­homme, direc­tor of the Tour de France, when he came to Com­piègne to pre­pare for Paris-Roubaix last March. He told me of his wish to have a dis­abled rid­er open the last stage of the 2024 Tour, first­ly because it was a nov­el finale (the Tour arriv­ing in Nice) and sec­ond­ly because he want­ed to make the link with the Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games. Talk­ing to peo­ple around me, I was put in touch with Axel Alletru, an incom­plete para­plegic and I thought that it would be a huge chal­lenge to do it in tan­dem with him”, recounts Aurélien Vauquelin, who was on the French dis­abled cycling team from 2003 to 2007 and has been French cham­pi­on sev­er­al times. After a mon­th’s prepa­ra­tion, the duo were ready on July 21, with the sup­port of French com­pa­ny Mous­tache Bikes. The Tour’s final time tri­al took place between Mona­co and Nice, over a 34 km course with 760 m of ascent.

A close-knit tandem for a unique feat

“Start­ing from the sea­side, we took the F1 cir­cuit and then climbed up to La Tur­bie (8 km at 6%), fol­lowed by the Col d’Eze (1.5 km at 10%). The route is mag­nif­i­cent, wind­ing along the Mediter­ranean Seafront. We set off just ahead of the pro­fes­sion­als, and so ben­e­fit­ed from the enthu­si­asm and encour­age­ment of the crowds lin­ing the route. The fin­ish in Nice and back on the Prom­e­nade des Anglais is still an incred­i­ble moment,” recalls Aurélien Vauquelin, a UTC alum­nus who now runs the AVMT Tech­nolo­gies Méca­tron­iques design office in Com­piègne. He works with both project devel­op­ers and major groups to devel­op pro­to­types and indus­tri­al­ize prod­ucts in the mecha­tron­ics sec­tor. He spe­cial­izes in the devel­op­ment of elec­tri­cal machines and their asso­ci­at­ed elec­tron­ics. “Axel and I have achieved some­thing unique! No one had ever imag­ined that a tan­dem with an incom­plete para­plegic and a visu­al­ly impaired per­son could tack­le such a dif­fi­cult course. We want to show that noth­ing is impos­si­ble as long as you give your­self the means to achieve it. We want to give hope to all those who have suf­fered an acci­dent or even an illness.”

KD