“They told me I couldn’t ski without legs. I proved them wrong”

BarcelonaIt wasn’t just about trying to win. In the Alpine Paraski World Championships organized by the International Ski Federation (FIS) this past week in Espot, a lot of athletes have competed who have decided that they have no limits despite having suffered stumbles in life. Athletes who were told they couldn’t compete, who sometimes looked like they would throw in the towel but overcame the odds. In total, representatives from 26 countries have participated in the disciplines of slalom, giant slalom, combined alpine, super giant, downhill and parallel slalom. It is a competition adapted to athletes with physical disabilities, such as spinal cord injuries, impaired coordination or amputations and vision problems, divided into male and female categories.

Athletes such as 25-year-old Andorran Roger Puig, who suffers from paralysis on the right side of his body, as well as the loss of peripheral vision in one eye, but who has already competed in two Winter Paralympic Games and as flag bearer of the Andorran delegation in 2018. “I had a skiing accident when I was 14 years old, during some training we did with the Soldeu Ski Club at the resort of Saas-Fee, in the Swiss Alps. I fell down a ravine and was in a coma. He had three internal hemorrhages in his head, in addition to two broken vertebrae and three ribs,” recalls Puig, who has starred in a documentary where he tells his story of overcoming. Puig had the dream of competing in the international arena. He was already skiing at the age of three, and he did his first competitions when he was five. And the dream remained intact, as the accident did not take him away from the snow. “Since I already had the technique, I was able to adapt, although you need to make changes in the way you ski. At first I was shaking on the skis, but when I was able to ski again with my old club, el Soldeu, it was very beautiful,” recalls this Andorran who spent part of his recovery at the Guttmann Institute in Badalona. In Espot, he finished in seventh position in the slalom test.

Audrey Pascual, from the waves to the mountains

One of the prominent names at the meeting was the 18-year-old from Madrid Audrey Pascual, who suffers from bilateral agenesis of the tibia. In other words, he lost his legs below the knees. “The limits I have are decided by myself”, defends a young woman who competes in the skiing World Cups, but also in the surfing ones. “I had cousins ​​who skied and I went with them. I couldn’t ski because I don’t have legs, but I decided to try and eventually I liked it,” he recalls. In fact, in a family chat a few days earlier, an uncle told him that he “could never ski, without legs.” The comment spurred her on. “I proved to them all that I could, that they were wrong.” Now her uncle is cheering her on, too, having discovered how technology has improved enough to give skiers like Audrey gear to get down the slopes. “What we do is still little known,” says the Madrid native. Roger Puig sees it the same way: “The media talk little about us, when the demand is the same as that of other skiers.” Pascual competes with skis prepared for his case, with which he started winning competitions at the age of 14. After also practicing the handbike, adapted cycling where you move the bike with the strength of your arms, Pascual decided to try surfing after spending a holiday in Cantabria. The young woman has already won medals both in the snow and in the water. In addition, his routine includes daily swimming sessions. In Espot, he won the silver medal in the special slalom event.

The oldest competitor in the competition has been American Matthew Brewer, 47, who was an international with the US Alpine Skiing Federation as a youth. But then he had to face the diagnosis of testicular cancer, which led to an amputation of both legs above the knees. At a meeting with other leg amputees, he met Paralympic skier Stephani Victor, who encouraged him to learn to ski again. Thanks to the support of his now-partner, Brewer returned to competition and trains at the High Performance Center National Ability Center, where he has been awarded the award for best athlete of the year 2020-2021.

This competition is part of the World Para Snow Sports Championships, international competitions approved by the FIS, which also include the holding of a new world event this March at the Catalan resort of La Molina. This week’s meeting took place in Espot, in Pallars, next to the Aigüestortes National Park and the Estany de Sant Maurici, a resort that has three competition stadiums, all approved by the FIS.