He regularly performs in one of Tokyo's amusement parks

Blind Japanese "addicted" to "skateboard"

  • The young man lost 95% of his sight due to retinitis pigmentosa.

    AFP

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The Japanese, Ryose Uchi, has all the ornate kits of a skateboarder, the baggy jersey, low-cut shorts and a flat-top baseball cap, but he also skates with something else, a stick.

The 21-year-old has lost 95 percent of his sight due to a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, a chronic genetic disease characterized by black pigmentation and progressive degeneration of the retina.

However, this disability did not prevent him from practicing skateboarding, or eagerly following its competitions behind television, after it was included for the first time in its history in the Tokyo Olympics this week.

Uchi is a regular at a skateboarding park in Tokorozawa, north of Tokyo, where many skateboarders, including this young man, confidently perform the tricks he knows best, placing the board on the floor and pushing his cane forward. , swings from side to side in order to feel the obstacles.

Touch experience

“Most people can see how things will be just by seeing,” Ryusi Uchi said. “But in my case, first I have to do an experiment.

I try to touch, I try to get on the board.”

Uchi started practicing skateboarding as a teenager when a friend offered him to try his own board.

He continued, "I tried the skateboard for the first time, and then I became addicted to it."

It wasn't easy for Uchi to play this sport, which involves regular falls and injuries, even for people who are not visually impaired.

In addition to his favorite sport, Uchi is also training to become an acupuncturist, and mentions what he is exposed to, saying: “People who can see get injured too, but the fact that I cannot see led to more injuries.”

And he added, “I don’t know if there is any obstacle in front of me because I don’t see it, and I will hit it and I will get injured.”

A wonderful feeling

To try to keep him safe, especially in new places, Uchi surveys the site thoroughly before he begins.

Explaining this, he said, “First, I check the environment of the place where I will practice skateboarding by walking.

If necessary, touch the ground with my hands and feet.

Then I try to memorize the scheme (the place), and imagine it.”

Uchi uses his imagination and intellect to design his tricks, so he adds, “I only think about what I want to do” and “My skateboard style, whether it’s a trick, a method, or a technique, is just my imagination that I translate into the desired movements.”

Despite his preparations, he suffered several injuries, ranging from bruises and fractures, but he stresses that "it does not matter, how painful it is, how difficult it is."

personal project

Skateboarding is among four new sports included in the current Olympics, along with surfing, sports climbing, and karate, in an attempt to attract the younger generation to the ancient games.

“I found it really heroic,” Uchi describes skateboarding. Like any athlete, he hopes to realize his sporting dreams by including blind skateboards at the Paralympics.

"It's a bit like a personal project," he concludes, "and I think it's like an order from God, to do my best to get it included as a competition (at the Paralympics)."

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