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Wojtek Czyz had long dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player – and those dreams were close to coming true, when at 21 he had just signed a contract with a professional club.
But shortly after penning his deal, Czyz suffered a life-changing injury after a collision with a goalkeeper in his last amateur game damaged his knee.
“Unfortunately … the medical support came too late. So everything below my knee was dead and they had to amputate,” he told CNN Sport’s Patrick Snell.
Coming so close to his dream only to have it ripped away was devastating for the athlete, who said he became “suicidal.”
“As much as I fought for becoming a professional football player, this destiny, this passion – I had now only one passion: and this is to end my life,” he said. After an attempt to end his own life was stopped by a nurse, he slowly changed his perspective and said that he “could put all my passion again into the right direction and this is how I recovered from this dark time.”
Just six months after his amputation, Czyz became the German champion in the T42 100m and F42/44 long jump. He later represented his home country at three Paralympic Games in 2004, 2008 and 2012, where he won seven medals – including four golds – in para athletics as a sprinter and long jumper.
An unlikely friendship and phenomenal sporting career
Czyz credited his Paralympic career to a friend, who asked him why he had wanted to be a soccer player in the first place.
“I said: ‘To enter a stadium full with 80,000 people shouting your name after you score a goal.’ It is simply this, this feeling which gave me the drive to go for it.
“He said, ‘OK, I will give you this DVD. Have a look and I will come back in 30 minutes.’ And this DVD was a documentary about the Paralympics in Barcelona from 1992 with the full stadium and people cheering. And this is where I said, ‘Oh, wow, I want to be there,’ and this was the door which was opened for me.”
That, and an unlikely friendship with former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, who at the time was head coach at German soccer team Mainz 05, helped to propel Czyz towards a new goal of becoming a para athlete.
“[Klopp] heard about my story and he directly decided to try to support me so that I [could] get a good prosthetic for the future,” Czyz explained.
After competing in three consecutive Paralympics, Czyz took a five-year retirement, spending much of his time distributing prosthetics limbs to 90 people in need of them. But after moving to New Zealand, he began to play and enjoy badminton – ultimately going on to represent the Kiwis in this year’s Paralympics.
“Imagine 2.5 years ago, I took a racket in my hand and I didn’t even know how to hold it,” he said.
This year, Klopp, who stepped down as Liverpool coach at the end of last season, supported his friend from the stands – and although Czyz eventually lost out to Great Britain’s Daniel Bethell, it didn’t dampen the pair’s spirits.
“He loves that I try to be the door opener now and this is why he came and, for sure, also to enjoy the Paralympics because he’s saying: ‘Look, they are the best stories,’” said Czyz.
Klopp, for his part, added: “How was it to watch him? Great,” per Olympics.com.
“Being here, I stood next to Elena, his incredible wife, and we both had tears in our eyes because I know sport is always about the result and winning, but there’s much more behind that story. And being here is always so touching that I couldn’t get my head around it.”