South African-British cyclist Jaco van Gass won gold in the men’s 3000-meter individual pursuit and set a new world record at the Paralympics just one week after being hit by a car in Paris.
Just days ago, during a training exercise, van Gass was rounding a corner when a car pulled up and slammed into him and his bike. At that moment, he believed his chance at defending his Paralympic gold medal was gone. But somehow, he ended up better than expected.
“I was heartbroken … I had a big cut on my head, but I had a few scans, and I was cleared. I was looked after really well,” he told reporters. “The next day is always the hardest, because that’s when you’re very sore and stiff. The Saturday was very hard to comprehend – will I be riding? By the Sunday, I was on the track.”
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Van Gass made it back to the velodrome in time for his competitions in Paris and defeated his teammate Fin Graham in the final with a record-breaking performance for Team Great Britain.
“I wasn’t worried about the cuts, but my knee was really badly bruised, but within two days I was back on the bike,” van Gass added of his injuries. “I did a session at the velodrome, and then I knew I’d be okay. After all, it was only a Renault!”
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The 38-year-old cyclist added his third gold after winning two at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 in individual pursuit C3 and mixed team sprint C1–5.
The car accident was far from the hardest blow that van Gass had ever taken. As a member of the UK parachute regiment in the 2000s, van Gass was deployed in Afghanistan for a second tour of duty in 2009. Near the end of his tour, he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in combat and lost his left forearm.
He had to undergo 11 operations after the explosion in order to recover from his injury, and he had become an amputee. But that didn’t stop him from embarking on a series of extreme athletic feats, including a hike to a polar ice cap, downhill skiing, extreme marathons and cycling.
It all culminated in his Paralympic debut in Tokyo in 2021, but he left Japan wanting something more.
“When I stood on that podium in Tokyo and looked at those empty stands, I wanted to do it with my family here, and now I have,” he said. “That was a decision I made three years ago, to focus on the training and not go off on crazy adventures and stuff.”
A car accident wasn’t enough to stop him from getting that moment in front of a packed crowd that included his family.
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