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Chasing down the dream – Cuban cyclist proves attitude is everything

BEVERLEY SMITH | Globe and Mail Published Friday, Jul. 08, 2011

NOT A HOCKEY ARTICLE, but a remarkable story about overcoming the odds…

It is not easy looking at Damian Lopez Alfonso, his face puffy and deformed with half a mouth, his forearms amputated, his body scarred.

But that we may be disturbed by the sight shows our disability, not his.

Alfonso, 34, is a cyclist, and a pretty damn good one. On Sunday, he’ll be competing in the first World Cup of his cycling career at a Paralympic-qualifying event in Baie-Comeau, Que., in a quest to get to the Games in London next year.

And the Cuban native catches a break: for the first time, he gets to ride a bike with the stumps of both arms resting on upturned handle bars.

Alfonso’s path to Sunday’s start line has been far more difficult than his path to the finish line will be. Although severely disfigured by a childhood accident in Cuba, he has a dignity that has opened doors and broken down barriers. He has never been ashamed of himself. He has never cried over his fate. He has never asked for favours.

When he was 13, he tried to retrieve a kite caught in power lines, tried to coax it down with a metal bar. Tragedy. During an explosion, when 13,000 volts of electricity sizzled and cracked, the metal bar bounced onto and burned Alfonso’s face, arms and torso. He spent a year in a Havana hospital and lost the lower part of his arms to infection.

Alfonso caught a glimpse of a brutal reality when he saw a reflection of his face in a hospital glass door during his recovery. Shocked, he screamed: “I’m a monster!” But he got on with his life. He does not like to lose a day to bathos and pathos.

Nothing fazes him. Alfonso eats with a fork. He can draw and write. He uses a borrowed iPhone when in New York. He is a bicycle mechanic. He can flip the top off a pop can. He can pick a crumb off a table. He neither wants nor needs prosthetics for everyday living.

Back home from the hospital, Alfonso gravitated towards his bicycle, his mode of transportation since he was a little boy, but his parents took it away from him, fearing, as his father said, that he would “kill” himself on it. Alfonso took to borrowing bikes from his friends, a move that constantly got his young buddies into hot water with his parents. Still, he kept seeking them out, riding at every opportunity.

“It makes me feel normal,” he said.

He suffered two bad crashes before he got the hang of it. Finally, his parents acquiesced, realizing it was what he really wanted and needed to do. Now they support him wholly.

A decade ago, he had another life-changing experience, a result of a chance meeting with Tracy Lea, former president of the U.S. Cycling Federation, at a Havana cycling race. Lea recalls competing in the race, and realizing a rider with no arms was beside her. Alfonso sped off, too fast to catch. And yes, he was riding against able-bodied cyclists, something he does almost every weekend in Cuba.

She met him again at another race in Havana a couple of years later when she was fumbling to fix her bike. He took the tool from her and deftly set things right. Lea began to think of ways to help him, – even though he hadn’t asked for help. “He didn’t even ask for a tire tube,” she said.

Lea, a fundraiser by trade, stumbled on the National Foundation for Facial Reconstruction in New York, and three years ago, came close to getting Alfonso to New York to have facial surgery. But getting a visa for him to get into the United States proved problematic. “We just ran into severe communication issues,” she said. “I almost gave up. I was very disappointed.”

Last fall, she had a chance to race in Cuba again, and she decided to go for the sole purpose of solving Alfonso’s travel issues. She did. And then things fell into place to create Team Damian in New York: lining up a team of doctors including one of the top facial surgeons in the world, Dr. Joseph McCarthy to reconstruct his face; getting prosthetics with the help of Achilles International and the Hanger Foundation; getting an astonishing digital system from Shimano, with a push-button system to allow him to change gears; finding him a place to stay while he was in New York; and taking the steps to get him qualified for the Paralympics, starting with an event in Canada.

What is most remarkable is that Alfonso has inspired the cycling community of New York and beyond to look past their own handlebars to help a fellow cyclist who lives thousands of miles away. Donations poured in to help offset expenses.

His surgery – provided free, probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, by the best in the world – was considered one of the most difficult reconstructions the team had done. The burns had destroyed blood vessels needed to generate new tissue.

The first surgery was particularly tough. They rebuilt an eyelid by sewing it shut. For four weeks, he had no vision in that eye. And then they pulled a skin flap from the scalp over his other eye, using it to help build the vascular system. Four weeks later, they had to put it all back together again. He also underwent a chin implant, which his body rejected, and last month, he had it painfully removed.

“It was extremely hard for him psychologically that first week, but within a week, he was back on top of his game,” Lea said.

He told photographer/friend/translator Marco Quezada: “I’ve been through worse.”

As much as others have touched Alfonso’s life, he has left his mark on them, too.

“I’m a New Yorker, born and raised,” Quezada said. “And it was just a humbling experience to meet him for the first time. He didn’t ask for any of this. He was perfectly happy with what he was doing.

“It’s changed me personally. I can never complain about having a bad day. This guy lives like this every day of his life. He has opened up our eyes.”

Ace McDade, a former cyclist who offered up his home in Ridgewood, N.J. to Alfonso, says the young Cuban has made an impact on the lives of his three young daughters.

When Alfonso first rolled up in the car to their home, he stepped out and played basketball with children from the neighbourhood for 1 ½ hours. McDade quickly learned that, even without forearms and hands, Alfonso can toss a basketball 50 feet.

“He frightens some kids and he doesn’t frighten others,” McDade said, “But after two minutes, they are all totally accepting of him. He’s an incredible athlete that they revel in. The adults do double takes, but the kids just accept it. It’s really great for our kids and our community that people are exposed to things they wouldn’t normally be exposed to.”

Come Sunday, Alfonso will face the start line in Quebec and another journey will begin.

“I wake up every morning, just happy to be alive,” he said. “I have a normal life. You have to have a positive attitude. A lot of people wake up with a negative attitude, but that is what your day is going to be like.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."