To participate in the Paralympic Games, you must commit to the highest level, starting with your mind, your body and also have the best equipment in order to compete and win, such as a wheelchair, otherwise, you may have a great disadvantage compared to your rivals, and that would knock you off the podium. Imagine that the day of the competition arrives and your chair has several faults. It would be terrible, right?
That happened to Peter Genyn, a Belgian athlete, who would compete in the men's 100m, category T51, but when he was going to start his warm-up and get ready to compete, he discovered that someone probably sabotaged his wheelchair, because it had some faults .
Peter saw to his surprise that his chair had all three flat tires and a broken compensator. There were only two hours left until the final started and 45 minutes to warm up, so his team had to run and do their best to correct the damage. They had found the front tire blown out the day before, and Peter said it looked like it had been done with a knife, although they were reluctant to believe it.
Someone must have been very scared. It was terrible, I really thought it was over, but I'm glad I was able to show that they can't even win this way. You have to be a loser to do something like that.
-Peter to the Belgian station Sporza
The Belgian athlete's team used parts from other bikes and lots of duct tape to get the saddle ready so Peter could compete. Despite fearing it might not work out, the athlete flew down the track and not only won the gold medal, but set a new world record in this specialty, with a time of 20.33 seconds.
Fortunately, I am obsessive about my equipment and have a lot of spare parts. I had my revenge.
-Peter Genyn
The Belgian Paralympic team has already made an official complaint to the organizers of Tokyo 2020 and the International Paralympic Committee, and now it only remains to wait for an investigation to be carried out, and it can be confirmed that there really was a sabotage. Peter is convinced that it was, but fortunately, that did not affect the result, and he already has his gold medal.
