“My hand hurts. All the time. I had to get injected yesterday”, she confessed. But the pain will not make her smile or the glow of her eyes disappear. Because when she woke up from the worst of nightmares, Alfonsina Maldonado had a dream: riding horses for the rest of her life. And now she lives for that dream.
Alfonsina was six months old and was sleeping in her crib when a candle set her room on fire. It is a miracle she is still alive. But she lost her left hand and the burns she had, kept her 32 days in a coma, one year and a half in an incubator and five years in an induced coma.
“The treatment was very painful,” she recalls. “When I was eight, I underwent a treatment of grafting. They opened my stomach and put my hand inside, and I had to keep the other one across my chest. I spend several months like that. I even had to learn to eat with my feet” she explains.
But riding horses and becominga “horsewoman”(that is the name for it, not “rider”) were the dreams that kept her alive. “I started riding horses in San Ramón when I was 13”.
But when she turned 19, the opportunities in Uruguay started to vanish. “Only because I hadone hand,” she said. If her eyes are fire, her soul is a hurricane. Because it seems that nothing can stop her.
“I went off to Spain to live my dream” She arrived to Yeguada del Lago in Gerona, 30 km away from Barcelona.
There she met Fandango and it was love at first sight. Fandango was the horse with which she prepared for the Paralympic Games in London 2012 in the dressage riders category.
“I stayed out of the Games for just two points. There are five judges in this sport who punctuate the performance according to their personal criterion. One of the judges, an Italian one, did not like my performance.”
Frustration?Disappointment?Pain because the support was scarce when each participation requested between € 4,000 and € 6,000? Sadness because she raised funds for the training sessions by selling t-shirts and hats, opening accounts in Abitab or collecting coins in gas stations? No, none of those feelings. “I just felt I had to do better and fight for my dream. I also realized I wasn´t ready enough”.
But angels are always around the corner. “While I was in a contest, I met Francisco Cancela, chief of the equestrian team of Portugal and Olympic Judge. He asked me if I had a horse for Rio 2016. I said no. He said that from that moment on he was going to be my coach.” Her face lights up again.
The man used his influences and one day Alfonsina read in Facebook touching news: Sasa Je, the major horse breeder of Portugal –based in Brazil- made her a new member of its team.
“I travelled to San Pablo and had three horses to choose. I chose ZigZag da Sasa Je”. That is how her new adventure pal is called.
The fact that such a powerful team entrusts a Uruguayan with one of its horses may seem a trifle in this land of international football stars. But a horse like the one she got costs around € 500 thousand.
Alfonsina reveals some of the cares demanded by the horse: “The horse needs massage and some stretching before getting out of the stable. There will be a medical checkup per month and I am travelling to Rio three months before the gamesfor the horse to get familiar with the conditions of the country.”
In the near future she will be travelling to a High Performance Center in Villa Verde, Portugal.
“I am leaving on June 16th with a tight regime of daily training sessions, from 6 am to 6 pm. I afford part of these training sessions with my own work, but I need to pay for the other rounds as well as for the trips to compete”. Her eyes glow with expectation. And her pupils also evidence she is confident about getting to Rio.
