News
Can She Come Back?
by Paul Gains
No matter which way you look at it, the year 2006 should have gone down as an exceptional chapter in the life of Swiss wheelchair racer Edith Hunkeler.
First there were the three gold medals she collected at the IPC World Championships over 800m, 1,500 and 5,000m in addition to a credible second place finish in the World Series of Racing. Indeed, her performances obviously caught someone’s attention because they earned her a nomination for World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability at the prestigious Laureus Sports Awards.
Alas, an horrific crash during the IPC World Championships marathon almost spelled the end of her illustrious career. Now she dreams of making a comeback.
“I had smashed my leg,” she quietly recounts. “It was very difficult as I had some operations and after the first one the doctor said ‘you will never ever race again because a leg like this you cannot bend it anymore.’ It was a hard time for myself but I always believed I could come back. It has taken a long time but I still believe in my comeback. We will see.”
Subsequent operations gave reason for optimism. Doctors put 10 pins in her leg to repair it. Hunkeler was eventually told she could begin training in her racing chair after six months. “If it’s possible I would like to race well again,” she says now. “I can bend my leg now. I started to train with some swimming and weight lifting in January, a little bit. But I lost a lot during the days I was lying in bed. I was in bed for two months. So it was really hard. But I feel that, although I am not ready to race, I feel well and that is the most important thing.”
Hunkeler is 34 now but as many athletes have proven in recent years, that doesn’t necessarily mean retirement is imminent. A return to competition, perhaps at the end of the calendar year, would be welcomed but for now the 2008 Beijing Paralympics is a more practical target.
“My goal is to go for Beijing. I feel that I have a lot of things to do. I like to race but its not the most important thing,” Hunkeler says. “I have a job (as a secretary with a jeweler) and of course I am thinking that I might want to raise a family. It’s still too early to think about that but I would like to finish my career like everybody else is doing. If you have an accident like that everything is done but I would like to come back.”
It is, of course, not the only catastrophe she has faced in her life. Hunkeler suffered a serious spinal cord injury during a car crash 12 years ago. It was while undergoing rehabilitation that she first learned about wheelchair sports - the sight of wheelchair racers in their chairs caught her fancy. A couple of years later she met her current coach Andreas Fries and the pair have, as she says, “grown up together.”
“I never dreamed of being a world champion; I wanted to race for fun. But in 1996 I figured out that if you do well you can go to the olympics and world championships,” she says. “I started to race seriously.
"I love to race. I really have fun racing. I know if I lose this feeling then I know I have to finish my career.”
Apart from her job, a busy rehabilitation schedule and her fitness program Hunkeler says she enjoys spending time with her boyfriend skiing, swimming, listening to music and just driving around. She considers these things to be normal pursuits. But Edith Hunkeler is far from the normal sportsperson. Who would bet against her turning up on the starting line in Beijing?