“And now, What sports can I practice?“, was asking Pau Navarro (Granollers, 1999) to his occupational therapist from the Guttmann Institute on the first day of rehabilitation at the center, after 48 days admitted to Vall d’Hebron. Two months before asking the question, the young man suffered one cervical spinal cord injury due to a traffic accident and since then – the end of 2018 – he has been in a wheelchair.
Can’t move his legs -where the involvement is total-, but he can partially move the upper extremities. Enough to satisfy your desire to continue playing sports and competing. “It’s not something physical, it’s also a mental process. But when I found out I had a spinal cord injury, The first thing I thought about was when I could play sports again.“explains Pau in a conversation with this newspaper.
Before the injury, Navarro was experiencing one of his best sporting stages: he was one of the promises of Spanish handball. At the age of 18 he had already played with the Granollers Handball first team, the club of his life, and was part of the junior team of the Spanish national team.
Sports and the ball have been part of his DNA since he can remember: first he started with soccer, then he realized that what he was passionate about was handball and later, life forced him to take a different path. Currently, he is wheelchair rugby player in the ‘spartans Granollers’ team. And in 2022 He once again wore the Spanish national team shirt with this sport, having played two European Championships so far.
“I hadn’t finished my rehabilitation at Guttmann because I was already trying out sports to be able to practice them later,” he admits. Before opting for wheelchair rugby, Navarro tried cycling and tennis, but they did not convince him. “He wasn’t ready to leave team sports after 12 years,” he says. That’s why he focused on playing wheelchair rugby. AND chose wellbecause in addition to competing, this sport allowed him to find a safe place where he was just one more. “In the locker room we all understand each other a lot, We have the opportunity to talk about things that are taboo on the street, but here they stop being,” he explains. “We are the first to make black humor among ourselves,” he comments with a laugh. “It’s a brutal freedom.”
Pau Navarro doing physical preparation as part of training with his wheelchair rugby team / Anna Mas
Undeniably, sport has been a key piece for his rehabilitation in all his processes. “When I started the sessions I decided to take it as training. I learned from a very young age that in training you have to have commitment, effort y sacrifice. And so I internalized it unconsciously in my rehabilitation“, comments Pau, although he emphasizes that the process was very long and expensive: “I lost 24 kg from the injury, the majority of muscle mass. The doctors asked me for patience, I had to relearn how to do everything from scratch.” Eight months after the accident, he returned to playing sports.
Paralympic sport still has many challenges ahead, such as Economic cost -a rugby chair can cost up to 13.000 euros-, but it plays a very important role in the inclusion of people with disabilities in society. “I know people who have had a harder time reintegrating after an injury, but by trying the sport and creating this bond as a team, they have begun to cheer up and be more autonomous,” she explains.
“But I’m not here to inspire anyone,” the athlete makes clear. “What I want to show is the naturalness and normalization of my situation and that of many other people,” says Pau, who regularly publishes videos of his training through his social networks. “If I manage to break that taboo and ignorance that society has, I have already won“.
Many things have changed, but today Pau continues playing for his hometown club with a ball in hands. A different sport, a different pavilion and new teammates. But the same desire to improve. “Tetraplegia is not the end of life, but the beginning of another,” he concludes.
2024-03-23 06:00:44
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