Lose a foot in a terrible accident on a track ski It seems like an unbearable setback in life, but Fiona Pinar She quickly viewed her new life as an amputee as an opportunity. “It’s strange to explain it like this, but when she had two legs she always wanted to participate in the Olympics. It seemed something unattainable to me, that there was a lot of level. “When I lost my foot I decided to see it as a personal challenge,” The young athlete, 20 years old, student of Advertising and Public Relations, explains to this newspaper.
The story of Fiona, a passionate about athletics and sports in general, came to the editorial office through a letter from his mother, Eduina Morales; a text with which he simply sought to “vent some steam,” he says, since it has been “two very hard years.”
Fiona was skiing with some friends at the La Molina resort on January 29, 2022. He slipped and broke his tibia and fibula. in the fall lost the boot. He became unconscious and He woke up in the Girona Hospital on February 2, one day after his anniversary. “It was very strange to receive congratulations on my mobile wishing me a quick recovery. Ripoll is very small, a town, and everyone knew that he had lost a leg,” recalls the young woman.
His mother remembers perfectly that she will never forget that anniversary, celebrating life after seven interventions. “When she woke up from the induced coma she cried a lot, but soon she set her goal to continue playing sports and participate in the Paralympic games,” says Eduïna, who protests in her letter about the little help her daughter has had to date. “If you are a federated athlete and have a sports career, they help you. But if you are an anonymous athlete, who has not made sport his life, it is very difficult to get ahead,” he maintains.
“Sport is essential for young people, their mental health is important in it”
He orthoprosthetic catalog of the Ministry of Health is insufficient for “people in love with sports” like Fiona, emphasizes Eduïna, who is grateful for the conventional prosthetic leg that the health system offered her, but believes that it should provide other tools so that “younger and more active people with some disabilities can participate fully in society. In other words, she believes that it is not normal for older and younger people, with different interests, to opt for the same implants. “Sport is essential for young people,” he continues, “their mental health is important to them.” Along the same lines, Fiona maintains that “a prosthesis that only serves to sit in front of a computer or go to the supermarket does not allow for a truly normal life.”
Limited catalog
He Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE) shares Fiona’s vision and has been fighting for years to open the orthoprosthetic catalog that Social Security works with to sport. “It is a historical claim”, explains to this newspaper the director of Communication and External Relations of the CPE, Luis Leardy Antolín, one of the coordinators of the ‘White Paper on sport for people with disabilities in Spain’, presented in 2019.
“One of the conclusions of the white paper is that sport is a first-order need. Sport is the main leisure activity for people with disabilities, but they often encounter barriers. That is why we think that just as there are prostheses that pursue and achieve the labor integration of these people, they should also guarantee integration in sport, at all levels, not just professional,” says Leardy, also secretary of the sports commission of the Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities (CERMI).
“Sport is the main leisure activity for people with disabilities, but they often encounter barriers”
The main obstacle that athletes like Fiona encounter is the cost of many essential materials to perform some modalities, materials such as ‘handbikes’ and running prostheses, which is why the CPE and CERMI propose specific measures in the book (page 344 ) how to create financing or cost reduction formulas of specific sports equipment” through the aforementioned introduction in the orthoprosthetic provision catalog of the National Health System and the application of a Reduced or super-reduced VAT of these materials.
Paralympic Promises
Fiona’s current dream, which He is already training at an athletics club in Vic, is to compete in the next Paralympic Games in the modalities of 100 and 200 meters. That dream is a little closer since he has a special high-tech prosthesis for running. They have had it for only two weeks and it has been difficult for them about 8,000 euros. It took the Pinar Morales family two years to raise this money, mainly contributions from relatives and Fiona herself, who was the image of a well-known sportswear brand in a advertising campaign focused on adapted sports.
“The prosthesis I have allows me to do sprint -the young woman points out-, because the cushioning is very rigid. For long distances I would need a different one.” He would also need a special implant to ski professionally, an option that he does not radically rule out. Without going any further, from January 1 to 5 he will return to the slopes of La Molina to participate in the Paralympic Winter Sports Promises program organized precisely by the Spanish Paralympic Committee and aimed at young people between 11 and 30 years old. It will be the first time I try snowboarding, a relatively new discipline in the history of the Paralympics – the first time was in Sochi 2014 – and where he could have options to compete internationally. Go to the appointment with great enthusiasm, but without pressure. If you are bad at it or are not convinced by that, sliding with the board, he adds, The tartan will always remain.
2023-12-24 16:20:58
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