CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, March 8 – Italian snowboarder Emanuel Perathoner, whose profession as an able-bodied athlete ended after a severe coaching accident in 2021, reinvented himself as a Paralympic competitor — and on Sunday gained his first gold medal in snowboard cross on house snow.
The crash marked a dramatic turning level for the 39-year-old athlete from South Tyrol, a northern Italian area close to the Austrian border. It prevented Perathoner, who had competed on the Winter Olympics in 2014 and 2018, from attending the Beijing 2022 Video games and pushed him to race as an athlete with a bodily impairment.
Tom Weller through Getty Photographs
The Milano Cortina Winter Video games had been a serious alternative for him — and he delivered. “My motto is: by no means quit, with or with no incapacity. And I can say this having handed from an Olympic profession to a Paralympic one. Sport can do every part,” he instructed journalists after the race in sun-lit Cortina.
“The observe was excellent at the moment. It’s superb to win right here in entrance of my crowd and my household.”
Perathoner suffered a fractured tibial plateau and underwent a alternative of his left knee, which is now locked at 35–40 levels, stopping additional bending.
His sporting future appeared over. As an alternative, after a yr of rehabilitation, he returned to snowboarding and commenced competing in Para occasions.
“In snowboard cross, with a knee that solely bends to 40 levels, every part is harder,” stated his physiotherapist Paolo Di Pietro.
“There are compensations with the again and hip, each in sport and day by day life. He trains particularly for these variations.”
Perathoner stated the swap from the Olympic to the Paralympic world was easier than anticipated.
“Crucial factor was discovering the need to compete once more,” he stated.
The Milano Cortina Paralympics will run till March 15.
(Reporting by Giancarlo Navach, Modifying by Giselda Vagnoni)
