Manuela Vos fell from a height of thirty meters while climbing the Picos de Europa. Until then he also competed in marathon events and iron manbut that July 5, 2021, she became quadriplegic. Three years later, and with just one year of preparation, she became our first world champion in Paralympic cycling: two gold medals in the road and time trial at the Zurich World Championships. Born in the Netherlands in 1968 and naturalized Spanish, she now tells her life after the accident in the Sala Cuarta Pared in Madrid, where she stars in the play Manuela, the infinite flightwritten and directed by Emilio del Valle.
When he suffered the accident, he thought about leaving this life.
Yes. I spent two months in the ICU, but the hard blow was when they transferred me to the ward and they took away many sedatives. Reality hits you there, because you don’t believe it. I looked at my body and thought it had to be a dream. If I was in a parallel world, I wanted to return to the other one.
How did you reconnect with your body?
It took me a long time. I have the feeling that I have returned to being myself since a year ago, when I began to think that this body, although I don’t feel it, is mine.
Sometimes you dream about…
I always dream that I’ll walk again. I’m lying on a blanket in the field and, suddenly, I realize that I can get up. I once looked for a person in a dream and said, “Prick me on the arm to see if it’s true.” I have woken up many times from a bad dream in which I walked again and it turned out that it was a lie. When it pricked me, I thought that this time it was real and I woke up… What a bastard dream! [risas]
Of course.
Recently I dreamed that I was sitting in the chair, I got up and went to the bathroom. “Come on, I can walk!” I said to myself. As it was just before the Paracycling World Championships, I thought: “Now what do I do? Do I tell people? Do I go to the mountains, which is what I most want? Or do I go back to the saddle, compete in Zurich and then announce that I have miraculously walked again? [risas]
Do you think your sporting past has helped you stand out in adaptive cycling?
Yes. Although I have little functional muscle left, the body has memory and recovers faster. I had practiced endurance sports, which involve suffering, which has helped me a lot, because it is a question of the head. People who don’t do sports don’t understand that we can like to suffer, but then there is a reward, because you feel very good. That’s why I call it “sweet suffering.”
Beyond his life, what does the work tell?
In reality, it is not just my story, but that of many people who live in a situation like mine. I want to make the public reflect, because what I would like is for society to treat me like anyone else. Although our body no longer has all its functions, that does not mean that we are not normal people, with normal desires and normal lives.
In the work, we also talk about what we have achieved and what remains to be done. In fact, I hope to help those who have gone through this: if you put your mind to it, with a lot of work and a lot of struggle, you can go much further than you think. The truth is that now I do things that I would never have thought I could do.
On the other hand, reality is stubborn and never tires of putting obstacles in their way. For example, you live near Madrid Río, but you cannot enjoy that recreational area as you would like.
I can access it, although I need help. We face architectural barriers every day, because there is not a sidewalk that does not have a hole, a lump or a curb.. At first I almost cried every day and wondered how I was going to live like this. However, there came a time when I said to myself: “This is what it is.”
There are people who ask me how I was able to overcome it. They consider me a heroine, but I’m not: I simply have no other choice. I, like everyone, try to have as beautiful a life as possible.
Do you think that influencing examples of improvement is positive? Not all people will have the disposition, the spirit or the willpower.
I am embarrassed to hear some comments, because I am not a heroine, nor do I see myself as an example of improvement. I’m not that different from who I was before: a normal person. I do things my way and everyone does their best.
I have always been very active and I have had a life full of adventures, something that I am looking for again, but there are people who maybe were very happy going to the movies, meeting their friends for a drink, watching series… They don’t They are neither more nor less than me, they are simply looking for a way to once again enjoy a life as similar to the one they had.
Sometimes I have come to think “I wish I was less adventurous before”, because my life would not have changed so much. What I miss now are my mountains, because, apart from my children, they were my life.
And do you dream of participating in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games?
I hope I can go. I’ve only been training for a year and I have a lot of room for improvement. Now a new four-year cycle begins, in which I must train hard and gain experience in order to qualify and then win.
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