By Walter Gullaci / [email protected]
The feeling that Daniel Plotequer conveys is that the last thing he would do is curse. For a bad pass, a deflected shot to the basket, an unexpected loss of the ball. Not in any way.
A guy who accepts his fate without question, when at 17 he left him without one of his legs in the middle of adolescence and love for sports, the first thing he denounces is strength. Communion with reality. But above all, a lot of desire to get the most out of life.
Aged 32, he was born on July 22, 1988 in Bahía Blanca, this man from Bahia lost his mother Elina five years ago. His memory arises by itself.
“My Old Woman used to wonder:” Why me, why me. ” Then, my maternal grandfather replied: “And why not you? Who are you so that I don’t touch you? That stuck with me. It’s like that, just… ”.
Victor, her father, is an unconditional support. Still at a distance.
“It is a reference for me. I haven’t seen him since February because he went to San Rafael, Mendoza. He has his brother there. Obviously I miss him ”, he maintains without losing that smile that would accompany him throughout the interview with The new one.
It was 11 a.m. on an incredibly windless morning in the area of the North Delegation sports center, where Daniel usually goes every morning to play basketball.
“I am suffering a lot from the pandemic. For three years, he traveled to Córdoba frequently to play for SICA (Santa Isabel Club Atlético), a conventional basketball club that incorporated the wheelchair club. The first month of my quarantine, my wife almost hanged me. Luckily the people of the North delegation are great. Here DUBa trains and they put all the facilities at my disposal so that I can practice. It’s a big ground wire for me. “
Daniel had joined a plan of the Municipality in a medical room, but they disaffected him this year. Then he resumed his architecture studies at the Universidad Nacional del Sur.
Married two years ago to Anabella, also a student but in the pharmacy career -they have been together for fifteen-, for now he does not think about having children, although his eyes brighten just mentioning that possibility.
“Tell me, Daniel, why so much passion for basketball?”
-My paternal grandfather, Jorge, a fan of Pichi Campana and the figures of that time in the National League, gave me a basketball as a gift, I just started walking. Well, to this day I have never parted with her. I started in Independent, then I walked through Speed and Endurance and Napostá. I even had the chance to go play for Estudiantes and it didn’t happen, until in 2005 the problem came to me, still 16 years old.
—The problem that led to the amputation of your left leg …
-Yes Yes. It had started with severe pain in the area of the femur. They studied me and nothing came out. They told me that I had a pinched meniscus, until one day before I had an ultrasound, I fell in a muddy area in Villa Delfina and my femur literally exploded, I lost my bone. They detected that I had cancer, an encapsulated tumor, which, when the bone exploded, took my muscle, everything.
“Then they referred me to Buenos Aires where I stayed for six months. The first three with chemotherapy, but it was a very aggressive cancer. Somehow they stopped the problem, since it did not rise higher than the tumor sector, but went down the entire leg, to the tips of the toes. There was no other way out than to amputate and well, it had to be done with three more months of chemo so that the issue did not advance to other parts of the body. That’s how I returned to Bahia on December 24, 2005 by plane because I couldn’t travel by bus ”.
“Did you have to grow up suddenly?”
-Yeah sure. I knock on wood, but if something similar happened to me I would ask from day one to be amputated. What I experienced during those first three months of treatment was very ugly. I would not go through so much pain, vomiting … It was a relief that they amputated me. My Old Man was crying inconsolably, but I was actually calm. I don’t know why, but I took it calmly.
“Within a week I was already walking in a walker. I remember that as soon as I left the clinic, the first thing I did was go to the Abasto shopping mall. I wanted to live. Nor did he know Buenos Aires. I had a lot of family support, more than anything because in those years disability was frowned upon, there was even some discrimination.
—Then Walter Mele appears.
-Yes. I remember that I was still in Buenos Aires, sitting in the wheelchair waiting for a taxi, and I said to my Old Man: “Will there be basketball in a chair?” He had seen movies of people in chairs shooting hoops. Then my dad met with Mario López, who was one of the founders of Duba, and after the parties, in the first days of February, he was training with Loco Mele. We were both in a very special moment. He wanted to renew the team, with young players, I fell, and I don’t know what he saw in me. From the beginning he encouraged me to play, he told me that I had conditions, that I could go a long way.
—How did the idea of the Argentine National Team appear?
—Walter was going to paint, which is his trade, Napostá, and it took me two hours to shoot the hoop, to run in the saddle… I spent a whole year training. Until one day he told me: “You are going to go to the National Team.” I replied: “nooo, I don’t think I’ve reached that much Walter.” Time passed and one day he took me to Buenos Aires to see the conventional Argentina team against New Zealand. At halftime the team in a wheelchair made an exhibition. “You’re going to be here,” the Fool would tell me. We trained for that and in the end he was right. I just made it to the National Team.
“Although it’s also about basketball, you almost had to learn to play another sport.”
—The shot was well mechanized, but Walter taught me how to get around a court in a wheelchair. The movements. It was difficult to adapt. Even today I continue to evolve. When I returned to the National Team two years ago, I realized how the game has evolved. The level grew a lot. The 18, 20-year-old kids are physically beasts.
The doors of selection
Daniel remembers that first trip he made with Duba. He went to Trelew, in 2007, when the door that Mele had envisioned opened.
“A coach who was setting up the Sub 23 in Argentina saw me. ´Do you want to participate? ´ he asked me. Obviously I said yes. When we got to Bahia I talked to my old man and the truth is that we weren’t very excited. Until my father received a call from Andoni Irazusta, president of DUBA, telling him that I had received a call from the National Team. You can’t imagine the joy ”.
After that, other calls would come. Like the one that led him to obtain the Pan American gold in Colombia, in 2009, in which Argentina beat Brazil in the Under 21 category.
“Beyond the physical loss, how did you handle the death of a loved one like your mother?”
“It was like a bomb.” He was 55 years old and died of a heart attack at my home. She had had serious problems with morbid obesity. He weighed 270 kilos when I was a kid. He was losing weight until he entered the Ravenna Clinic and managed to reach 88 kilos. I think he died blaming himself for what happened to me. It made a lot of bad blood. She didn’t push me into that, but she got down a lot with me. To top it all, I was the only child.
“Bahia does not contain us”
– Do you feel integrated into society? I remember that Carlucho Villar, after the misfortune that left him in a wheelchair after the accident with his Speedway motorcycle in England, constantly fought for this issue when he lived in Bahia.
“Little by little, but a long way off.” We are light years away, for example, in infrastructure. Bahia does not contain us. The city is not adapted to contain people with disabilities. I don’t have the limitation of a chair over there. I use crutches, I can climb a ladder. I fall and get up. But many people with disabilities have a very hard time. Moving only in a wheelchair is directly impossible in Bahia. The sidewalks are a mess, most corners don’t have ramps, it’s a mess.
“I don’t know many cities, but for example I was playing in Bogotá, Colombia, and it is super-adapted for people with disabilities. Nothing to see. Even people are different. I remember that one rainy day, the same people accompanied us when we got out of the combis, with umbrellas, so that we would not get wet. I was surprised by that detail ”.
—And do you suffer any kind of employment discrimination, for example?
“The truth is, we are far from ideal.” I was in a plan “to insert people with disabilities into the world of work” (he says it by reciting the phrase, with annoyance) and charged a pittance. And he worked like any person without disabilities. It’s not fair.
“But hey. Now I returned to the Uni, I come quite well with virtual classes. And with basketball I want to do more. If possible, transcend the border of this country, leave and see if I can access a higher level. But I also think about receiving myself to work on what I am studying ”.
“What would you say to a young man if something similar to what you suffered with that traumatic episode happens to him?”
“Hit him forward.” And if I hook the family, I would tell them to support him in everything. In fact, it happened to me when I was working in the City Hall in the Certificate of Disability seating area. I remember that I hooked a mother of a boy who suffered the same thing that happened to me and thought: “How do I tell him that his son is going to end up like me?” It didn’t cheer me up. But I spoke to him, asked for the phone number and went to his house to see the boy. I found it good. Animated. He went to church a lot. We are all looking for a form of containment. I was very lucky. I found her with my family and in guys like Walter Mele.
“Do you look at your chair like a friend or out of the corner of your eye, with some contempt?”
“I feel like they’re my slippers.” I accepted it right away. I had a hard time adjusting, but I knew I couldn’t play basketball standing up, so you had to do it sitting down. Well, here you see me.
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