Beat Disability-By Embracing It

To promote positive role of sports in rehabilitation of people with physical disabilities, Sarmad Tariq, a quadriplegic (paralysed shoulder down), led an enthusiastic group of regular cyclists in the first-ever hand cycling event organised in Islamabad on Sunday.

A source of inspiration not only for disabled but also for the normal people who fail to utilise their capabilities, Sarmad wore a green flag shirt with a small flag adorning his hand cycle, a relatively new adaptive sport for people with physical challenges. The event titled ‘Road to Inspiration’ was a project conceived by Sarmad at the beginning of 2008.

Sarmad was only 15 when in 1991 he broke his neck vertebras C4 and C5 while taking a dive in a pond that was not deep enough for that kind of sports. The injury in turn crushed his spinal cord leaving him paralysed shoulder down for the rest of his life.

“I always wanted to become a world class boxer and for that I intended to join the army before that accident,” he told ‘The News.’ Amazingly, his disability failed to dampen his passion for sports. Sarmad believes that his physical confinement is the reason to his spiritual liberation. “Just as my legs refused to listen to me, I stopped listening to the world.” Resilience being the key to his success, he is living more than an active normal life with a mainstream career.

Among his regular achievements he also holds the world record for the longest non-stop drive by a quadriplegic. He drove his hand-controlled car for 33 hours, covering a distance of 1,847 kilometres from Khyber to Karachi. On January 30, 2005, he was the first ever and the only wheelchair bound athlete in Lahore Marathon. By covering the distance of 42 kilometres in seven and a half hours he qualified to represent his country in the ING New York City Marathon 2005 and made history for Pakistan by returning with a finisher’s medal.

Currently he is busy working on his hand cycle to set a land speed record by going 100 km/hrs. In yet another effort to highlight the challenges brought about due to spinal cord injury and the positive role sports could play in the integration of disabled people into mainstream society, Sarmad was joined by many professional cyclists, friends and children. Some children even brought their tricycles to show solidarity with him. Many came just to see this man of courage. All wore yellow ribbons as yellow is a cycle racing colour.

The cyclists started their journey from the Fatima Jinnah Park and took a round of Sector F-8 while passing through Blue Area and Margalla Road. They returned to the starting point after almost two and a half hours. Many enthusiasts joined them on their way. The participants were also given a folder containing amazing pictures and information about international athletes with disability.

Sarmad said that though Islamabad is better than all other cities with regard to the facilities for disabled people but still there is so much room for improvement. “Pavements are not wheel chair friendly whereas majority of ramps in big plazas and hospitals are too steep making such buildings unapproachable for disabled persons without another person’s help,” he said.

His inspirational story of his way to the life that is certainly better than many normal persons is available on his website www.sarmadtariq.com. “Majority of us can walk but how many of us can actually walk tall,” is the leading message of this amazing website. He mentions in his biography that ever since that accident, he has been plagued by one medical problem or another but his medical problems have not caused as much pain or grief, as many people he has met over the years.

Many times, he was refused admission in colleges due to his disability to write. “Most of the business schools simply refused to entertain my admission application and the only one, which did, had too many stairs. Imagine losing out on a career ladder because of one’s inability to climb stairs.”

“People in my kind of predicament know it better than anybody else that they are not physically normal like others but neither are they inferior in any way. They are just different in appearance. And this is the key point apparently being missed by the majority of the people. Ignorant biases haunt the physically disabled more than their medical shortcomings.”

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