Famed Mountain Biker’s Road to Recovery

Brut America

This famed mountain biker was on top of his game when a crash nearly left him paralyzed. Now, Paul Basagoitia is looking to use his journey to recovery to help others with spinal cord injuries.

Transcript

00:00I was told I was never going to walk again.

00:25The first year I had really not too much movement from the waist down and it was, here I am

00:31living my worst nightmare.

00:32It was the biggest challenges I've ever had in my life.

00:36I got to be able to move my right leg for the first time.

00:42I knew there was some sort of hope to be able to maybe regain some movement sensation and

00:48maybe to be able to walk again and to pedal a bike once again that I used to love doing.

00:55Believe it or not, I enjoy riding bikes more now today than I ever have before.

01:03It's kind of weird because when you think about the situation, the bike causes this

01:06to happen to me, but at the same time, the bike brings so much joy to me.

01:10I used to hate pedaling.

01:12All I ever wanted to do was go downhill, right?

01:15Now I'm like, I want to go up the steepest hill.

01:17I want to feel my legs burning because every time I feel my legs burning and getting sore,

01:22I'm like, yes, my legs are working, this is amazing.

01:25You take that for granted and to get that back is a huge blessing.

01:37The word cure in spinal cord injury is a very touchy subject and I really want to bring

01:40that back to everyone's attention and maybe one day we can find that cure.

01:47When we see this film, maybe a young kid that's graduating from college, maybe he wants to

01:52go and be a stem cell scientist and find that cure for spinal cord injury because right

01:59now there's no funding whatsoever when it comes to spinal cord injuries and there's

02:02not too many people spending much time backing it up other than Wings for Life, so hopefully

02:07that changes in the future.

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