France's para athletes are set to return home on Monday night to a gala celebration of their exploits at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Games where they won 12 medals including four golds.
Thousands of fans are expected to gather at Chamrousse 1650 ski station in south-eastern France for a day-long festival of DJ sets and workshops on winter sports such as biathlon, ice hockey, tandem ski and dualski.
There will also be the formal welcome for the Paralympic flag.
It was handed over to the organisers of the next paralympic Winter Games in the French Alps on Sunday night at the closing ceremony of the 2026 Games at the Cortina Curling Centre.
Amid a back-drop of war in the Middle East and Russia's offensive in Ukraine, International Paralympic Committee (IPC) chief Andrew Parsons told the assembled Paralympians: "You have risen above pressure, expectation and global tension to keep the focus where it belongs: on you and your sport."
The 14th Winter Paralympics began formally on 6 March with a glitzy show at the Verona Arena that was boycotted by nine nations in protest over the IPC's decision at its general assembly last September to allow Belarusian and Russian athletes to compete under their national flags.
At the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics in February, these athletes competed as Individual Neutral Athletes.
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Para athletes from Russia and Belarus were banned from competing under their own flags following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
A partial ban was also introduced in 2023, allowing para athletes to participate under a neutral flag at the Paris Summer Paralympics in 2024.
Several national paralympic committees, including hosts Italy, argued that Russian and Belarusian para athletes should take part under a neutral banner.
On Sunday night, Giovanni Malago, president of the Milano-Cortina organising committee, hailed Paralympians' ability to inspire positive change in society.
"You have been a beacon of unity in a world threatened by darkness and division," he added.
Over to France
As the 13 French para athletes and their four guides headed home, the country's top paralympics administrators were reviewing a medal haul that fell short of expectations.
In the run-up to the event, they held up a target of 18 medals which would lead to a top four finish in the medals table.
The tally of 12 was frustrating, said Marie-Amélie Le Fur, president of the French Paralympic Sports Committee.
"There is no disappointment with this result," she added. "Because, on paper, this French team was tipped to perform well.
"On the ground, it did perform well but there are several factors that explain why we didn’t achieve our target."
She conceded that coaches had underestimated the levels of foreign competitors especially those from China who rarely appear on the European circuit. The former para athlete added that France might have sent too few para athletes to the Games.
"It's been a topic of discussion since the start of the Games," she added. "But one might question the strength of our French team. And yet size of the delegation isn't the be-all and end-all. There are nations ahead of us in the rankings who have fewer athletes than the French team.
"We have some collective work to do on the depth of the French team with a view to the 2030 Games."
