- In August 2017, Martin Petit was the victim of an accident on a beach in the Landes. He fractures a cervical, his spinal cord is affected, which makes him quadriplegic.
- During his period of rehabilitation, Martin began to talk about his daily struggle on the networks and greatly grew his community.
- He uses his audience to convey committed messages about accessibility and sweep away ignorance and prejudice about his pathology.
There are days when fate turns to the wrong side. That of Martin Petit, a 31-year-old Bordeaux influencer followed by more than 100,000 followers on Instagram, was upset on August 21, 2017. At the end of a "beach with friends" afternoon on the Landes coast, this seasoned sportsman decides to take a dip for the last time of the day. "I was frankly not very attentive, I was coming out of a breakup and I was in the Landes to try to change my mind a little, recalls the native Tourangeau. I dive, I don't see the lack of bottom, I hit my head and broke my neck. Then I started drowning and I have a friend who pulled me out of the water. If I had taken three more steps everything would have happened differently. »
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Transferred to Bayonne hospital, Martin fractured his cervical C5 and had his spinal cord affected at C6 and C7. "I have a tetraplegia called 'low', which means I have more or less upper body mobility, but all four limbs are affected." Long months followed in a rehabilitation centre in Cambo-les-Bains, in the Basque Country, before being transferred to the Tour de Gassies, in Bruges in Gironde. "It allowed me to get closer to my friends and family who were in Tours. I didn't know where I was going so I let myself be guided by the medical staff."
During these "more than complicated" months, Martin begins to write and tells his rehabilitation process on the networks. He shares his doubts, fears, victories and receives many messages of support in return. "At the time I already had a small community following me, it grew a lot at that time. I was in a big slump in my life. I had lost all my bearings, I was palmed, I had to assert myself in another way, since I was sitting, I was 1.30 m and I no longer knew my body. »
"It is better to put billions to make a society accessible"
So, Martin reconnects with the sport, his self-confidence inflates to the rhythm of his community. And the Girondin took the opportunity to convey a committed message. "This is not a cause that is necessarily very well known, castigates the influencer. There is this very miserabilist or superheroic side. Me, I speak to an audience that perhaps recognizes itself more in me because I am a lambda person who has had an accident. I think it spoke to quite a few people. »
On his networks, Martin raises awareness to make his pathology known and tries to sweep away "ignorance of what it is to be in a wheelchair" while making a point of honor to accessibility. "If you make a society accessible to a person in a wheelchair, inevitably you serve the whole society," he explains. When you get older and you can't take the subway because of the steps, you have a stroller, you have one foot in a cast. So it's better to put billions on the table to make a society accessible so that behind it there is less stuff to catch up. »
A 360-degree influencer
To get his message across, Martin does not hesitate to vary the formats and media. From now on, he intervenes on the radio, in conferences or on the biggest French YouTube channels, always to get his message across as when he appears in a Tibo InShape video, in 2020 or with Amixem last April. At the same time, he launched his own clothing brand, "Hoyat", which donates one euro per purchase to the APF France Handicap, which works in the field of disability on a daily basis.
But here again, the influencer denies undertaking for his simple personal interest: "Putting myself forward is one thing, it serves my interests and it's rewarding, we're not going to lie. But what matters above all is what we do with all this, what fight we are fighting. And Martin Petit found his.
- Society
- Handicap
- Bordeaux
- Gironde
- New Aquitaine
- Aquitaine
- Social Media