ISRAEL: CYCLE RACING: Israeli double amputee hand cyclist Pascale Bercovitch proves injury, sports-hopping and family life are not an obstacle to major athletic achievement

Record ID: 397419

  • Title: ISRAEL: CYCLE RACING: Israeli double amputee hand cyclist Pascale Bercovitch proves injury, sports-hopping and family life are not an obstacle to major athletic achievement
  • Date: 12th July 2012
  • Summary: LATRUN, ISRAEL (JULY 3, 2012) (REUTERS) ISRAELI PARALYMPICS CYCLIST PASCALE BERCOVITCH WARMING UP ON TRAINING HAND BIKE, AHEAD OF GOING OUT FOR A RIDE VARIOUS OF BERCOVITCH PEDDLING ON TRAINING HAND BIKE PEOPLE WATCHING BERCOVITCH AS SHE TRAINS VARIOUS MORE OF WARM UP SESSION DOUBLE AMPUTEE BERCOVITCH LIFTING HERSELF FROM RAINING BIKE BERCOVITCH TENDING TO BIKE BERCOVITCH
  • Embargoed: 27th July 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVAA7Q4K91HKO6Y29S5TSALURQ1W
  • Story Text: When Pascale Bercovitch hurried to catch a train to school on a freezing December morning in a Paris suburb in 1984, the last thing she could have imagined was that one day she would represent Israel at the Paralympics.
    Then 17, she tried to jump onto the departing train but could not hold on. She fell under the wheels, the train severing her thighs and leaving her inches from death.
    Unable to move, she lay on the tracks for 47 minutes, counting down the seconds until the next train came along and finished her off. She recalled that when a paramedic finally turned up he expected to find a dead body.
    "I had the time to think 'what's going to happen with me?' Of course I am not going to survive that, but if, if I do survive that I won't be able to do any gymnastics anymore, I am not going to be able to be at school anymore. I understood that all what I knew, and all what I was, is gone. I understood that very very quickly," Bercovitch told Reuters of the accident.
    Recovery was long and painful for Bercovitch, now a 44-year-old mother of two girls. But since moving to Israel, she has represented her adopted country in the Paralympics as a rower in Beijing and is now set for London as a hand cyclist.
    Bercovitch discovered her Jewish heritage when she was 13 and it prompted her to volunteer to serve in the Israeli army after her school studies. The accident delayed those plans but she eventually did get to carry out her wish.
    After recovering sufficiently, she served for two years and returned to active sport under the auspices of "Etgarim" ("Challenges" in Hebrew), an organization that helps rehabilitate the disabled through sport. Disabled sports people, she feels, have a double duty -both trying to improve sports itself, and setting an example for others, healthy or handicapped.
    "I know that the people that are looking at me, that are supporting me, that are following me, for them it has a very strong importance. It's 'OK - she has no legs, she is a mother, she is a mother, she is working, and she is an athlete, and she is an Olympic athlete, Paralympics athlete, and she gets very good results'. People think - OK - I can do it too," Bercovitch said after a training session in Latrun, central Israel.
    Bercovitch has worked as a television journalist and filmmaker concentrating on disabled issues and makes a living as a motivational speaker, using her story as the basis for her presentations.
    Rowing at the Beijing Paralympics was a one-off, Bercovitch said, because a dispute with her coach meant she could no longer continue in the sport, so she switched to hand cycling less than two years ago with the aim of qualifying for London.
    "The only problem for Pascale is she is very young in this sport, the cycling sport. And she has to make a big gap and very high jump to stand at the same level of world class cyclists," said her cycling coach Ilan Ulman. "She has to train harder, and to make bigger sacrifices," he added.
    Bercovitch will compete in the three disciplines in her hand cycling category for athletes with lower limb disability - a road race, a time trial and a mixed team relay. Events will be based at the Brands Hatch motor racing circuit near London.
    She has an outside chance of a bronze medal in the road race, Ulman said. But he added that by the next Paralympics in Rio in 2016, her chances would improve.
    When training on the road, Bercovitch hoists herself into a specially designed "bucket" which supports her from the waist down. Ulman said he pushes her as hard as any cyclist he trains.
    She uses a rural road just off the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway for hill training and also works out in a gym and in a Tel Aviv park, devoting every day of the week to her preparations.
    Ulman added that because she weighs only around 30 kilograms (66 lbs), Bercovitch had an advantage when climbing, although on the descents the cycle was much harder to control and she could create less momentum.
    Bercovitch said she was in regular contact on making modifications to her bike with Alex Zanardi, an Italian racing driver who also lost both his legs above the knee after a car race accident in 2000, and has also turned to hand cycling.
    While Israel has earned just one gold medal at the Olympics, it has achieved far greater success in the Paralympics, having amassed 333 medals including 113 golds since its first participation in 1960. It hosted the third Games in Tel Aviv in 1968.
    Despite an exhausting training routine, the extraordinarily vivacious Bercovitch says that her biggest challenge in life is not athletic achievements, but being a mother.
    "It's really difficult to be an athlete at the highest level and to compete internationally and stuff, but being a mother 24 hours a day, with all the responsibilities and questions inside 'I am doing the right thing?' 'I am saying the right thing?', 'are they happy?' and bla bla bla bla, and all the little things of life, I think it's much more difficult at the end of the day, than being an athlete," she concluded.
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