Team France - Profile

Swimmer Beatrice Hess is France's most successful Paralympian and one of the top medal winners from any nation. Only one athlete has won more summer gold medals in Paralympic history than Hess, who won 20 gold medals across five Paralympic Games between 1984 and 2004. She has been a Paralympic champion in every swimming stroke in a variety of distances from 25m to 200m.

Eric Lindmann proved among France's most bankable swimmers during his Paralympic career. A versatile performer, he finished his run of four Games between 1992 and 2004 with 18 medals in total, eight of them gold. He reached his pinnacle in 1996, collecting four gold medals at the Games in S7 and SM7 classification freestyle, medley and backstroke races over 100m, 200m and 400m distances.

Operating in the same period as Lindmann, Pascal Pinard was nearly his countryman's equal in terms of medal-winning exploits. Also a swimmer, Pinard also collected 18 total medals only falling one short of Lindmann's gold total with seven.

Although the NPC has been most successful in swimming, wheelchair fencing has been a constant source of medals. France is the most successful fencing NPC in Paralympic history by some distance.

Christian Lachaud and Andre Hennaert are among France's most successful fencers with both winning gold medals across multiple Games. Lachaud won at least one gold medal at five separate Games, the first in 1976 and the last in 2000. His most prolific Games came in 1980 when he won three gold medals.

Hennaert shared a number of team gold medals with Lachaud but had a shorter run, winning his first medal in 1972 and his last in 1992. Significantly, in addition to fencing medals, he won multiple minor table tennis medals.

More recently, athletics competitor Assia El Hannouni has been a great source of success for the French NPC. She won a total of eight gold medals at three Games between 2004 and 2012. She swept gold across the T12 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m events at the 2004 Games and went on to defend the 200m and 400m gold at the two subsequent Games.

At the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, France tallied 28 medals, winning nine gold, five silver and 14 bronze. The total was one of its smallest in history and 17 fewer than it won just four years earlier in London.