Alessandro Ossola, a Paralympic sprinter, had one of the happiest days of his life at the Paralympics, and it had nothing to do with his performance in his athletic race.
Even though Ossola did not make it to the T63 100 metres final, he managed to get his fiancée to say “yes” when he proposed to her in the Stade de France grandstand following the race. In front of 40,000 spectators, Ossola knelt and asked Arianna for her hand in marriage, to her shock and delight.
The athlete said: “Our relationship is like a maelstrom because every athlete needs people around them to push them… Sometimes, she believed in me more than I believed in myself, and that’s something truly amazing. ‘You can do it, you can succeed, you can, you can,’ she would say. This is something everyone needs, and I hope that everyone finds someone like her. She is my partner … for life.”
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In a motorcycle accident in 2015, Ossola lost most of his left leg and his first wife died as well. He says that playing sports helped him smile more and more after his accident, when he lost everything else.
“Some might say today wasn’t an amazing day for me from a sporting perspective. I say it was. At 36 years old, I was competing with the best in the world, and I’m really proud of that,” Ossola declared.
Ossola, who also founded the first inclusive padel circuit in history and a nonprofit organization aimed at dispelling myths about disabilities, said this could be his final Paralympic competition. He also competed in Tokyo three years ago. Ossola said: “With what I’ve achieved in these last days at the Paris Paralympics, I feel like I’ve closed that circle. Now, I’m ready to start along a new path because my life isn’t over, and I have many things left to do.”
Source: CNN