“There are many barriers to overcome, every day: architectural barriers as well as the barriers in the mind of so many people. Never mind, I think we have to be brave. That’s how I began practising sledge hockey”: this is the story told to SIR, by Fabrizio Cozzi, 40 next September, goalkeeper of the Italian national sledge hockey team, who will take part in the Para-Olympics of Turin (10-19 March), dreaming "of course, of mounting the podium”. Affected by vertebral-medullary paraplegia after a mountain accident, which left him with injuries of the spinal chord, Cozzi has been forced to use a wheelchair since 1983: "Of course, there are problems he admits but you cannot withdraw into yourself. Life must be lived to the full". Sledge hockey, he explains, "is a demanding sport and it’s not easy to find the time and energy for training before tournaments. But one thing for sure: if sport is good for normal people, just imagine how good it is for the disabled”. Before architectural barriers and the "couldn’t-care-less" attitude of some "normal people", Cozzi says he is "against self-pity". "I am fighting he states so that any sort of obstacle, both physical and psychological, will be pulled down". Hence his wish, at the end of the Para-Olympics to "go in the schools and tell the students about this sport and all that surrounds it. The young he concludes always look ahead”.
