Paralympics: The Aussie team have picked up four medals including a gold on Day One of the Paralympics.
Aussies make golden start to Paralympics | 00:41Jaryd Clifford looks back now and questions his sanity when, not for the first time in his athletic career , ambition overrode the counsel of friends, family and his own brain.
The bid to make up for that disappointment now threatened to dovetail into another for a runner who made his Australian Paralympic debut while still a school student in the 2016 Rio games.As his guide Tim Logan said in an interview with the Victorian Institute of Sport, where the pair train, “case studies of similar injuries tossed up horrible outcomes - legs snapping through”.
“Obviously if you snap your femur, it could be a career ending injury. I know I could have pulled out and would have been fine, but I was confident two weeks of rest that I could still run which, to be honest now, sounds really crazy.”Despite the fracture in his femur, and having stayed off his feet for the best part of a fortnight, Clifford went out and still managed a podium finish.
Clifford paid heed of the lesson and, rather than running in the marathon in Paris as he did in Tokyo three years ago, has shed the longer race in a bid to look after his body. He begins his campaign in France tonight.VIEWING LIFE ON THE PERIPHERY “Even running on gravel that appears flat, I guess if people go out and run around Albert Park Lake or The Tan at night-time, they’ll realise that they have a lot more false steps than if they were running in the daytime. So it’s kind of like that for me in a way.”
They now share a house with friends in East Brunswick and prior to the Olympics took the chance to head to Wimbledon and to Lords, among other events, while training for Paris. About the only thing Clifford dislikes about his guide is that he barracks for Essendon. “Just crossing a road with him, I’ve got to trust him with my life. So it’s … ten years of him proving himself over and over again.”
“But to truly switch off, I need to trust the people that I’m running with and it’s taken a lot of time and it’s taking the right people, but I guess you’ve got to embrace being vulnerable. “He put an announcement over the speaker and … it was just a whirlwind of really cool moments. I remember standing on the track in Rio and there were two Brazilians in my race and as we were standing on our marks, I couldn’t put any weight through my front leg because I was shaking so much. I was so nervous and the crowd was so loud.
A couple of years later he set a world record in the marathon for his class when running a time of 2:19.08, which boosted his confidence leading into Tokyo.“The silver he won in the Tokyo marathon has special significance, I think. He finished almost covered in vomit,” he said. “A lot of changes happened very quickly and I probably really just wanted the Games to be over and for life to be simple again.
South America Comfortable Doing Podium Finish Australian Team Tokyo Regina King Western Asia University Of Melbourne Brazil Reasonable Peripheral Vision Eastern Asia Pretty Sore Leg Gold Coast Tunnel Vision Athletic Career Europe Japan Broken Leg Stewart Mark Gold Medals Talented Runner Visual Fatigue Element Green Room Project Western Europe Jaryd &Amp Amp Amp Elsie Clifford Start Line Horrible Outcomes Crazy Things Finish Line Australian Paralympic Debut Kurt Fearnley Courtney Walsh World Para Athletics Championships Gold Medallist Apprentice Electrician World Record Bryn Lennon Dubai Agence France Presse Oceania Special Significance America Paralympian Jaryd Clifford France Getty Images Inc. Australia And New Zealand Pair Train Rio De Janeiro El Amin Chentouf School Student Asia Matthew Clarke St Helena Secondary College Career Ending Debut Experience Stress Fracture Tim Logan Australia Paris Queensland
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