MI CARTA

This letter has been written by me, Susana Rodríguez, a Spanish paratriathlet with a visual impairment due to albinism. I am 22 years old and since I can remember I have always loved sports: watch on TV and practise. When I was 8 years old one of my favourite games was playing with my sister to the “Olympic Games”, something we had invented to spend our free time at home playing with a ball, doing running races in little space, jumping with a rope, etc. Then I had the opportunity to practise swimming and participate in different competitions here in Spain with people with sight problems like me. Then I decided to change to athletics and became a sprinter; I learnt a lot with this, made new friends and travelled to several places in my country and abroad to participate in different races, live and train at a High Performance Centre and, above all, be a healthy person, opened to diversity. I qualified for Beijing 2008 Paralympics, but then I could not attend because of some bureaucratic problems. I was so sad, cried as never before and realized that one of my biggest dreams had vanished. I dropped sports and devoted my time just to studying, travelling or spending time with friends and family. But after a year, I realized that I wanted to be back to sports. I missed a lot that important part of my life and all the nice things it had given to me since I was a child. I found a sport which was totally new for me. This was paratriathlon: swimming, cycling and running. When I finished the first race I was participating in, I felt the happiest girl all over the world. I thought I was not going to be able to do it, but I was and this turned to be the beginning of a story that I hope it will last for a long time. In this last year, The International Triathlon Union has been doing an incredible hard work for the development of paratriathlon all around the world. They have organized different events in the same dates and places of the triathlon championships for people with no disabilities. This has given a high rate of quality to this sport: a fantastic organization of the events, an increase of the relationships with triathlets from the different categories (with and without disabilities) and a big party of sports of each competition. Perhaps, there is any other sport where world champions, world Olympic champions, children, old and young people, coaches and media join to follow a competition of people with disabilities. Triathlon has reached the highest rate of equality. ITU has also worked hard on creating a clear system of medical classification for athletes with disabilities which I think is so important to make a fair play competition. They have also worked on Anti-Doping education programmes for us the athletes, and I think they have not forgotten any important detail on their job. But to make paratriathlon continue growing, I think it is essential that it becomes Paralympic Exhibition Sport in London 2012 and Official Paralympic Sport in Rio 2016, in the first Games that will take part in South America. I have met different people who have participated in Olympic and Paralympics in different sports like triathlon, athletics, swimming, judo or football and they all said that it was a great experience inside but also outside the field. Paralympic Sports have experienced interesting changes in the last year and day after day, we can say that we are a bit closer to equality with sports for the non disabled. I think it would be nice that the values of Paralympic Movement promoted by IPC reached Paratriathlon and give the opportunity to a lot of athletes from different nationalities that are training hard of making their own paralympic dream comes true. We all know about the benefits of sports for everybody, no matter the age, culture, sex or physical condition. Sport is not only appearing on TV or winning a medal but something else: it is trying to use sports to be a good person, to be tolerant, to respect the other ones or to make peace. These benefits are even bigger in cases as when we check that society sometimes does not understand the possibility of being different. If it is brilliant to see the hard work of paralympic swimmers, runners and cyclists, just imagine how wonderful would be a triathlon at Rio 2016 in a so beautiful venue with people from many places racing for being the first Triathlon Paralympic Champion. They would do an in water swimming start, then get to their bikes and finish with a run. If they are blind, it will not matter, because they will compete with their guide; if they don’t have upper or lower limbs, they will manage with the accepted special equipment; some will need help for transitions but they all will be able to do it. Just let us have the chance of showing it to the world. Thank you very much for reading these thoughts and I hope to join you in Rio 2016