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ICE HOCKEY

Forsberg defies age and injury to lead Sweden

Swedish ice-hockey's talisman, Peter Forsberg, reports that he is winning his fight to be fit to seek his third Olympic crown with the Tre Kronor (Three crowns) national team.

Forsberg’s status as returning veteran is shared at the Vancouver Winter Olympics ice-hockey tournament with Finland’s Teemu Selanne.

Both players are battling injuries as the ice hockey event opens, and both hope to help put their teams back into the finals as they were in 2006.

Forsberg, a 36-year-old former National Hockey League star now playing for Sweden’s Modo, has a nagging right foot injury but is confident of being passed fit to take the ice for the Swedes.

“I don’t think I will ever be 100 percent but I feel good right now,” said Forsberg, who helped Sweden claim the 2006 title and scored a shootout gold medal-wining goal to beat Canada in the 1994 final.

Selanne, who plays for the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks, helped the Finns to silver in Turin and bronze in 1998. He’s counting on Finland being underestimated.

“That’s our strength for sure,” Selanne said. “You don’t hear anybody saying we have a chance but almost all our guys come from the NHL too and we play against these guys on a daily basis. It’s one game and you never know.”

Selanne, 39, suffered a broken jaw when struck by a deflected puck last month and will wear a protective jaw guard in his fifth Olympics. Giving Selanne a gold medal Olympic sendoff is in the minds of Finnish players.

“Of course that’s a little part of the thinking process,” Finnish forward Niko Kapanen said.

A host of former NHL “oldies but goodies” from the Russian league will be matched against today’s NHL talent at the Olympics, including Russian Sergei Fedorov, 40; Czech star Jaromir Jagr, 38; and Slovakia’s Ziggy Palffy and Jozef Stumpel, each 37.

Jagr has been teasing Forsberg in recent days as the ice-hockey face off nears, saying, “Even when he played in Sweden he would play only two games, be injured for three,” and adding, “You can’t play on a high level if you don’t practice.”

Forsberg countered with, “It depends on the kind of injury you have. I have played with my injury for six years.”

Swedish coach Bengt-Åke Gustafsson is fine with Forsberg as he is.

“I’m not worried about it. He’s coming along,” Gustafsson said. “It’s not where he wants it to be. Health-wise he is okay but he has got to get that feeling back.”

What Forsberg brings to Sweden is unmatchable inspiration and spirit.

“His competitive play is something else,” Gustafsson said. “He knows when and how to get involved. He will pay the price all the time and has a winning attitude. He forces the younger guys to come out and play hard.

“He can turn the game around easily by himself. He can step in and change the picture pretty fast. He knows what to do to win. That’s a big asset.”

Forsberg hands Canada and Russia the favourites tag but warns that one-game knockout rounds leave such teams more vulnerable to inspired underdogs.

“Canada and Russia, they have unbelievable rosters,” Forsberg said. “But it’s going to be a lot harder than people think.”

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SPORT

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation

The Paralympics is full of stories of disabled athletes overcoming the odds to achieve sporting greatness but few bear the trauma of Jean-Baptiste Alaize.

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation
Jean-Baptiste Alaize training in Antibes. All photos: AFP

The 29-year-old French sprinter and long-jumper, who features in Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix released on Wednesday, was just three years old when he lost his right leg.

Not by accident or illness but by the brutal hack of a machete.

A child caught up in the civil war in Burundi in October 1994, he watched as his mother was beheaded.

“For years, every time I closed my eyes, I had flashes. I saw my mother being executed in front of me,” he tells AFP after a training session in Antibes, running his finger across his throat.

The killers left the Tutsi boy for dead. Alaize carries a large scar on his back but he was also slashed across the neck, right arm and right leg by his Hutu neighbours.

He woke up in hospital several days later, alive but missing the lower part of his right leg which had had to be amputated.

“With my mother, we ran, we ran, but we didn't manage to run far,” he says. “We were executed 40 metres from the house.”

A decade later, after coming to France in 1998 and being adopted by a French family, he joined the athletics club in Drôme.

Fitted with a prosthetic limb, he discovered that running gave him his first night without a nightmare since the attack.

“From my first steps on the track, I had the impression that I had to run as long as possible, so as not to be caught,” says Alaize who now lives in Miami.

“I remember like it was yesterday my first night after this session, it was… wow! I had cleared my mind. I was free.

“My energy, my hatred, were focussed on the track. I understood that sport could be my therapy.”

He tried horseback riding and enjoyed it, reaching level six, out of seven, until he pulled the plug.

“It was my horse that let off steam and not me,” he laughs.

The psychologist did not work out either.

“She made me make circles and squares. After a few sessions I told her that I wanted to change my method.”

However he did click with his school physical education teacher, who directed him to athletics after he had anchored his team to a spectacular “comeback” win in a 4×100 metre relay.

His classmates had no idea he was an amputee. He had hidden it to avoid teasing and more racial abuse.

“I was called 'bamboula', dirty negro, the monkey. It was hard.”

Fortunately, the Alaize family, who adopted him after he had spent five years in a Bujumbura orphanage where his father had abandoned him, gave Jean-Baptiste a base and a home that he had not had for years.

“When I arrived here I didn't know it was possible,” he said.

“I had lost that side, to be loved. I still can't understand how racism can set in, when I see my parents who are white, and I am a black child… they loved me like a child.”

His parents, Robert and Daniele, had already adopted a Hutu child from Rwanda, renamed Julien.

John-Baptist was originally called Mugisha. It means “the lucky child” which is not quite how things worked out. His new family name, though, suits him better. Alaize is a pun in French for 'a l'aise' – at ease.

The French disabled sports federation spotted the prodigy, and he began collecting his first trophies, including four junior world titles at long jump, three of them with world records.

“It was starting to change my life and I was happy to represent France,” he says.

He went to the Paralympic Games in London (2012) and Rio (2016), where he finished fifth in the long jump, just five centimetres short of the bronze medal.

Now armed with his state-of-the-art prosthesis, which he nicknamed Bugatti, he was dreaming of taking a step up at Tokyo 2020 and going home to France with a medal but the postponement of the Games has decimated his sponsorships.

“I'm still looking to compete at Tokyo 2021 or 2022 and Paris 2024,” he says.

“If I don't succeed, I will have to turn the page which would be sad.”

He hopes that Rising Phoenix will raise his profile and maybe attract some sponsors.

The documentary's producer Ian Bonhote is in no doubt that Alaize's star is rising.

“He bursts through the screen. His story will resonate,” he says.

“The nine athletes in our documentary all have different backgrounds, but none survived what Jean-Baptiste suffered. His disability was imposed on him in such a savage and violent way.”

Rising Pheonix is available now to view on Netflix.

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