Para-cyclist Anthony Lue pushes to reach 2016 Rio Paralympics
Athlete hopes to raise money for new bike after freak accident changed his life
If you see a rocket race past you on the streets of Toronto, don't worry — it could be Anthony Lue.
The North York para-cyclist has set his sights on the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio, but the 27-year-old needs a brand new bike to help him get there.
"It's so fast, it's like a little rocket ship," he said of the sleek, bullet-shaped handcycle. "You're just flying."
The trip to Rio would really be the last leg in a race that began six years ago, when Lue, a star track athlete with a partial athletic scholarship, broke his spine in an industrial accident and lost the use of his legs.
It was Sept. 30, 2009, and his boss at Auto Boyz, a detailing firm, asked Lue to drive an old car down to the K and K Recycling Company, a scrap metal yard, he recalled.
Lue's boss pushed the car down the street using his van and then a Bobcat pushed it up onto a scale to weigh the metal. But the crane operator above didn't see that Lue was inside, he said.
A pile of twisted metal
The operator dropped a multi-tonne magnet onto the car, instantly crushing the passenger side and knocking Lue unconscious. And then he picked the car up into the air, Lue said.
"That's when the Bobcat operator jumped out and said someone's inside. [The crane operator] panicked and he dropped me from 15 feet."
Lue said he woke up when the car hit the ground, in a pile of twisted metal.
"They described it as a little cocoon, but I say it's the angel's wings around me."
If the magnet had moved 15 centimetres closer — half the length of a school ruler — Lue said he would have been crushed.
The athlete was 21 then.
Playing sports 'a no-brainer'
At first, he didn't know what he would do next. How he would work, how he would go to university.
How he would compete.
But a Burlington, Ont., basketball coach read about Lue and set him on his current course, although he likely didn't realize it. The coach drove out to see Lue and offered him a basketball wheelchair and a spot on his team.
"I realized that this was pretty much the same as able-bodied sport; coaches are coming and calling you and giving you equipment," he said. "It was a no-brainer for me."
Although Lue played several basketball seasons with the team, he kept trying new things. Finally, he tried a handcycle, a gruelling workout of pushing your entire body weight using the power of your back and biceps.
"It was history from then," he said. "It was amazing, because it's just freedom."
Raising $25,000 is his goal
Lue has his own bike, but it's a piece of second-hand equipment that's about two sizes too big for him. He's only been training competitively for about a year, but he's already boosted his speed to about 35 km/h and been chosen to represent Team Ontario as a para-cyclist.
That means he'll have to get to training camps in Florida and Arizona, where he hopes to boost his speed by another 3 km/h this year — 4 km/h if he gets a streamlined bike that fits him, he said.
Lue's literally propelling himself to that goal; he rides between 15 to 60 kilometres almost every day. Training depends on whether he's working in the afternoon — Lue's a reporter with Accessible Media Inc. and also speaks to teens about risk-related trauma.
He's hopeful he'll be able to raise $25,000 before going to Rio to help cover the associated costs of a $10,000 racing chair, coaching fees, training camps, a dietician and physiotherapy.
He kicked off the campaign Saturday with a party in Whitby, Ont., featuring Pan Am athletes Nikkita Holder and Braxton Stone-Papadopoulos as well as Toronto Raptors guard Cory Joseph.
"To know that you have all those people behind you makes it that much easier to get up and go out and ride when I am in pain," he said. "But, honestly, the fact that I just wake up is enough. That I can just get up on my own, get out of bed and look out my window and see different colours.
"After being that close to death, every day is a blessing."