“Life is like an arrow in flight. You aim well, but between the arrow and the target there is the variable of destiny.” That mocking fate that the young guests of the San Raffaele nursing home in Sulmona know well. That dive, that motorbike, that intersection, that fall. There are many of them, even very young ones. “Helping them get back to living despite their abilities compromised by the injury” explains the head physician, Giorgio Felzani, “is a road often paved with suffering, discouragement and apathy. It is also for this reason that the Disabled Sports project was born and developed at our Spinal Unit. A rehabilitation training offer that combines sport with traditional therapies and robotics. And which from 2021 also includes archery as an official discipline under the supervision of specialized and certified FITArco (Italian Archery Federation) technicians of the Peligni Archers Association”.
In this two-year period the Abruzzo facility, one of the very few Spinal Units in Italy where this discipline is practiced, has managed to introduce a large number of patients, of different ages and with various spinal cord injuries, to the practice of archery, bringing some of them to participate, once discharged, in some sporting events of national interest. Among these is Francesca (fictitious name). Twenty years old, she has been living with paraplegia for a few months which has forced her to use a wheelchair. Admitted for rehabilitation at the Abruzzo nursing home, she immediately entered the Disabled Sports project, revealing herself to be among the most promising students, according to Claudio Perrotta, the instructor of the ASD Arcieri Peligni who follows her, even individually, with the aim to lead her to participate in the selection for her first official competition with a compound bow. Who knows, maybe one day she will get on a podium, maybe not. Today she is already a champion. Of life.
“Let’s let sport prevail over disability” underlines Felzani, “the patient approached the discipline of archery after a short period of adaptation to hospitalization and already from the first sessions, in addition to improvements in trunk control and residual muscular functionality, a great talent in the discipline emerged. In addition to the recovery of residual functional abilities, the true mission of the path undertaken by the children of the Disabled Sports project is social reintegration and entry into the sporting world with the concrete hypothesis of reaching levels of excellence. Archery is that sporting discipline that promotes physical qualities as well as self-control and determination, producing notable beneficial effects both on the psychological side and on the self-awareness of one’s motor skills”.
In fact, it is a sport that does not contemplate differences. It is a discipline that makes no distinction between Paralympic and able-bodied archers. Athletes are used to training and competing together, in the same competitions. Disability is not visible on the firing line. It is the great beauty of archery, a precursor of that integration that other sports also have. The first of the Paralympic sports boasts the distinction of being the sport that opened the events of what would become the largest sporting movement for athletes with disabilities in the world. The year was 1948.
2023-11-13 08:00:00
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