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He has no legs, but it’s hard to feel sorry for himTRAVIS GAERTNER was basically born without any legs, but if you want to know if the Paralympian wheelchair basketball player from North Kildonan feels sorry for himself, here’s a little story.Just yesterday, one week after the Gaertner was named to the Canadian national squad, I asked his mother, Diana, how her 20-year-old son ended up in a chair in the first place.“He had a congenital birth defect.. she began.And then something strange happened. Diana started laughing out loud. She couldn’t help herself.“I’m sorry,” she said, trying in vain to stifle the giggles. “You’ll think I’m so cruel, laughing about my son, but...” Hirns out, Diana was laughingNo stopping this Paralympics-bound athletebecause just the other day, Travis was telling her how one of his teammates was paralysed in an accident where a hotel balcony collapsed. The guy was eventually awarded several million dollars in damages.So 'IYavis says to his mother: “Why was I born this way? Why couldn’t I have been in an accident? I could have been a millionaire.”The two of them howled.This is TYavis Gaertner, the person, who has never made any apologies for his disability. It was never an issue, even when he was a little boy competing with able-bodied kids in swimming and track.“That was the problem,” Diana said. “You couldn’t stop this kid. He was so full of life. He was the kind of little guy where the neighbourhood kids would forget about the chair.”In fact, Gaertner was involved in so many sports, his mother one day suggested her son settle on his favourite. “I want to become the best in that field,” he said back then. “I just don’tknow what it is yet.”So at age 12, shortly after his father died of cancer, Gaertner picked up a basketball and his fate was sealed. In fact, about six years ago when the kid was trying to raise some sponsorship money for an athletic chair, he boldly wrote that his goal was to make the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney.Well, look at Gaertner now, headed for Australia along with teammate and fellow Manitoban Joey Johnson, from Lorette. They represent half of Manitoba’s Paralympic contingent, along with Glenn Mariash (shooting) and Michelle Stilwell (basketball).Continued Please see PARALYMPICS C4
Newspaper Details
Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg, Manitoba, CA
Fri, Jun 02, 2000
Page 16
Full Page
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USA 08 Jan 2020
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