Badminton as medicine after a thief cut off his arm

Badminton debuts on the Paralympic program in this Tokyo 2020 and the players celebrate the new one with crazy matches. Among them, the one that faced the Dutch Megan Hollander and the Ugandan Ritah Asiimwe. He won the first, perhaps because of the amulet he wore around his neck, a very special memory of his mentor in this sport, his mother.

Hollander, who is a fan of Carolina Marín, was born without part of her left arm and acceptance as a teenager was not the easiest in the world. His mother told him that sport could give him strength and goals. And he noticed badminton. “I always felt different, but with para-badminton I saw that there were more people with disabilities like me. That helped me in the process, “he commented on his origins in sport.

She started in 2015, feeling stronger every day and talking to her mother about dreaming of a Paralympic Games. «My mother took me to the World Cup in England and I won bronze. Sharing that moment with her was very special. But in 2018 it was all over. Her mother passed away from cancer and Megan didn’t want to keep hitting flyers. «I started my para-badminton journey with her. Going to the Paralympic Games was our dream. It’s a journey that we started together and it was something I wanted to end with her, but I couldn’t, ”she recalled. She did not want to play anymore and took almost a year without picking up the racket, returned home and started a life with her boyfriend, without thinking about shuttlecocks or nets. But little by little the pain passed, he began to be happy again and remembered those conversations about the Games. “I finally realized that I could go back because she would always be with me.”

And he is with her in a mental, emotional and also physical way, because the Dutch woman wears a necklace in Tokyo 2020 that contains the ashes of her mother. “It’s beautiful,” he noted after their meeting yesterday. But he also wears it on his skin, because on his right arm he has a tattoo with the date of his mother’s death: 26.6.2018. “Even in 2017, when I was already sick, I kept telling myself ‘Go ahead, you can do it, you can be the best.'”

At the moment in Tokyo he has lost his first match and has won the second, against Ritah Asiimwe. The Ugandan began in parabadminton in 2019 and in 2020 she had to leave it due to the pandemic, so she is a newcomer to this sport, but she already has the strength, courage and level to qualify for the Games.

He had strength and courage the day he became a person with a disability. In 2005, he was arriving at his grandmother’s house when he saw two individuals trying to enter. One of them carried a machete, the other a hammer. “They saw me and instead of jumping over the wall, they chased me. And I’m thankful they did because I don’t know how many people they could have hurt. It was Christmas and all my cousins ​​and sisters were there, ”he says.

«We fought, one was in front of me, with the machete, and the other, behind, with the hammer. I thought that if I dropped the machete I could take it away and throw it, and that when I went looking for it, I would go. And everything happened very quickly, he tried to hit me with the machete, I stopped him, but the one in the back hit me on the ankles. I raised my leg and I don’t remember any more. I woke up, wanted to walk away, but realized that my hand was loose. I wrapped her in a sweater and went to ask for help. I asked the neighbors for a glass of water and I think I passed out. When my grandmother arrived, I was listening to her, but could not see her. They took me to the hospital, my mother came the next day. They took me to a hospital in Kampala and had an amputation. I left the hospital after three weeks and was cured in the following month.

After graduating from Mbarara University of Science and Technology, he felt he needed to return to sports because after the amputation none seemed possible. «In 2018 they told me about a para-badminton competition and I didn’t go, I ran to it. I have not returned, “he commented yesterday after the game against the Dutch. I had never been with people with disabilities. “He looked and said to me ‘there are people who are worse than you, maybe you can be someone'”. Of course, although she is right-handed from birth, she had to learn to play with her left. He doesn’t care, he was able to defend his family and now he’s at a Paralympic Games.