vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #547 / Social life / Reading article...

After losing his sight and becoming partially paralyzed ten years ago, Andrei Fetisov, Master of Sports in weight lifting from the small town of Vrangel in southern Primorye, did not lose heart and fought to get on his feet. Moreover, he won a number of prizes at local and national sports competitions and is training for the international competitions in Brazil next year.

Fetisov’s life made an unpleasant and harsh turn in 1996 when he and his companion decided to take a couple shots of vodka while doing some repair work on Fetisov’s parents’ house.

The vodka turned out to be tainted with methyl alcohol which is known for its destructive poisonous qualities. Thirty milliliters of methyl alcohol is known to be enough to cause death.

Fetisov suffered severe poisoning after which he lost his sight, 60 kilograms of weight and his ability to move.

Once weighing 100 kilograms, Fetisov, a 28-year-old athlete, in a single moment, turned into a disabled man tied to his bed. His wife left him.

“It is not in my nature to give up, and I decided to strive with the hardship,” Fetisov revealed. “At that time I had only one thought – I had to start training and walk again,” he said.

The following two years he daily trained with dumbbells and actually worked out his own method of musculoskeletal rehabilitation. In 1999 his paralyzed legs recovered but his sight did not return.

Today, Fetisov works as a weight lifting coach. He has a family – a wife and a daughter. He trains children, the disabled and athletes who have experienced traumas. “I work with people who had high falls, broke their ribs, arms or legs. It takes about two or three months to get them on their feet,” he said.

Fetisov has won prizes in weight lifting at Primorye’s regional competitions, as well as those at the Far Eastern District competitions. His latest victory at Russia’s Heavy Athletics Cup held for blind athletes gave him a permit to participate in the next year’s international competition for the disabled in Brazil.

His dream, however, is to participate in the 2008 Paralympic Games to be hosted by the Chinese city of Beijing. Currently, Fetisov says, he is number one in his weight category in Russia’s team. “If everything goes well, in a year and a half I will compete for gold medals. I have confidence in my strength,” he shared optimistically.