As Fernando Rufino reels off the harrowing list of mishaps and injuries which have marked his life, there comes a degree where you start to wonder if you’ve gotten been transported to some type of alternate dimension.
Rufino is certainly one of Brazil's most famous Paralympians because of his canoeing achievements. He is nicknamed the “Iron Cowboy” in reference to each his past as a rodeo rider and the metal plates used to bolster his spine. He sustained this injury when he fell from a moving bus on the age of 21 and his body was crushed by the wheels.
That alone could be an excellent story. But you haven't even heard the half of it.
He was once trampled by an 800 kg bull and dragged along the bottom by a galloping horse. There were also automobile, motorcycle and horse riding accidents.
“I broke my thumb,” Rufino says. “I cut off the tip of that finger, and a small sawblade fell on my face and penetrated right under my eye. My brother and I always tried to recreate fight scenes from movies. One time he hit me with a wooden board and cut my head open.”
“When I was a teenager, a bull broke my jaw. Then I got hit by a bus. I drove my motorcycle into a tree at 100 km/h. I was lifting weights in the gym when a metal bar fell on me and broke my nose. I broke two ribs from overtraining. I trained for two weeks with a broken leg and thought it was just a muscle problem…
“Then lightning struck me.”
Flash?
“Yes! On my doorstep. I felt the energy undergo me. I used to be thrown into the air. I landed on my neck and cut my elbow. I used to be curled up on the ground for about quarter-hour, my muscles completely cramped. For three days afterward I smelled something burning.
“I love it when I have accidents. Then I just have more stories to tell. I'm a wilderness guy, a warrior who wants to win in life, a cowboy who won gold at the Paralympics.”
And today, the reigning Va'a 200m VL2 Paralympic champion and three-time world champion will enter the water to defend his title.
Rufino grew up on a conventional farm in Mato Grosso do Sul in mid-western Brazil. He and his parents still live there with horses and bulls. The money Rufino earns from canoeing is invested within the property, which they manage in accordance with his grandparents' lifestyle.
Rufino became a rodeo rider because he dreamed of traveling the world, but after his spinal cord injury, he knew his profession was over.
With the assistance of his father, he learned to walk again on the farm and spent almost the complete rehabilitation period at home, riding horses and swimming within the reservoir. “Animals are part of my story and who I am,” he says. “They helped me walk again.”
However, Rufino still desired to travel the world and sport was one strategy to try this. A friend found a middle that trained disabled athletes. He tried just a few sports after which on August 7, 2012 at 8 a.m. – he still remembers the date exactly – he tried para-canoeing.
“On the water, I forget about my disability,” he says. “I feel like everyone else. If you saw me paddling next to someone who doesn't have a disability, they wouldn't know which of us is disabled. It's liberating.”
The 39-year-old missed the 2016 Rio Paralympics as a result of hypertension and hypertrophy of his heart, but his technique improved because the training load was lighter. When he made his Paralympic debut in Tokyo in 2020, which was postponed for 12 months due to global pandemic, he made a press release together with his tufted silver hair and have become the primary Brazilian to win a gold medal on the Paralympic Games.
Fernando Rufino had his big breakthrough in Tokyo (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)
Cheered on by his family on the house farm, Rufino will compete against his good friend and fellow countryman Igor Tofalini, also a former rodeo cowboy who was his best man at his wedding in 2018. They live, eat and train together on the National Canoe Center in Ilha Comprida, Brazil. On the water they’re rivals, but off it they’re good friends, and so they share every thing.
“If he wins, we'll celebrate with a barbecue. The same goes if I win. But the gold and silver medals are ours.”
Bald-headed, bushy-bearded Rufino, who keeps his cowboy hat in his room within the Paralympic Village and annoys everyone with the “sadest country music” on race day, is mentally and physically ready for the heats on Friday and the ultimate on Sunday, should he qualify.
“Without wanting to sound conceited, I have already won everything there is to win in my sport. I believe I can leave here as a two-time Paralympic champion.”
Rufino says the 2028 Los Angeles Games will likely be his last Paralympics when he can be 43 years old, however the only thing that matters to him is being remembered because the “true Iron Cowboy.”
“I'm definitely going to die old. I've tried to die young, but I've never managed it.”
image credit : www.nytimes.com