OTTAWA – There’s no stopping Mike Sametz. This past August on Opening Ceremony day at the Paralympic Games, Sametz’s Games was over before it even began. In his morning training session, the 28-year-old Para cyclist from Calgary crashed violently while road training and broke his hip.
He was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery and a long recovery was projected for the Paralympian to be back on the saddle.
‘’It was a very unspectacular accident,’’ recalled Sametz at the Team Canada Celebration in Ottawa last week, where he was walking with the aid of a crutch as he congratulated and mingled with his Paralympic and Olympic teammates. ‘’I went from the road to the bike path and I didn’t notice the gutter was at an angle and my wheels hit it.
‘’Because I have cerebral palsy, I didn’t brace for it like I normally do. So, I must have flopped at the wrong angle and at a strong force. I pretty much snapped my femur. I had a strong suspicion it could have been broken when I first hit it because of how hard the fall was. I was hoping the pain was just a bone pain, and I could just sit in a recovery tub for a couple days and be back at it. But once I got the x-rays, I was like, oh…’’
Three screws were needed to re-attach the broken bone, the biggest in the human body. ‘’It’s just been a recovery process for the last three months since.’’