Beijing Paralympic Games 2008
All the training is worth it!Nihao (hello)
Running mates: sorry i haven't seen you in a while but I'm still unable to run (could I ever?) According to two physios and three doctors and a partridge in a pear tree I have fluid trapped just below my hip probably from the hip joint duhh. My hip has been x-rayed, it is fine but something is not right. After varius jags and treatments I am now awaiting an MRI scan to check it out. But it is a long wait. According to the experts i should not run at all (I have managed the occasional jog) 4 miles max but it is sore. I read Amanda's tale of missing running and I agree you miss it. But cycling is brilliant, you can go a long way in 2-3 hours. So I am keeping fit in that way.
Sean and FriendsNow enough about me moaning. Since I've been gone you may have heard that myself and my wife Susan went to Beijing (in China) to watch our youngest boy Sean swim in the Paralympics. Sean has cerebral palsy (very mild in his words) but he is some swimmer. He trains with Warrender Swim Club week days and Stirling with the Scottish squad on sundays.
At the Paralympics he swam 100m Butterfly and was 8th in the final. 100m Freestyle was 15th overall did a p.b. He also p.b'ed in his 50m Freestyle and was 9th overall: a great achievement but better was still to come.
Wow - unbelievableSean reached the final of the S8 100m Backstroke and incredibly won a Paralympic bronze medal (no p.b but who cares.) Of course Susan and I were very calm (ha ha) we hung off the balcony, me in my kilt and St. Andrew's cross wrapped round us and were screaming. Thankfully our China friends didn't know what 'you f...... beautiful bass' meant. But I think they got the idea that we were happy. We were screaming at Sean so much that Claire Balding who was working for the BBC just below us shouted up "I take it that's your boy" to which I replied in my poshest accent "You better f...... believe it is darling".
Sean with some deranged dodgy fan. (Ricky supplied these captions by the way.)After the ceremony Sean came into the stand beside us with a minder who said he had five minutes which became fifteen because he was surrounded by Chinas. It was bedlam they all wanted their photos taken with him and his medal. The whole experience was wonderful. The Chinas are lovely people and Beijing is huge (New York-ish) mad, but very clean and with so much to see and do.
Isn't life wonderful? (but don't tell the wife...)But the icing on the cake was the medal. It brings tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat just thinking about that race. The greatest day of my life was watching my daughter being born (aww) but that medal swim is a very very close second. So there is more to life than running (sob sob) and drinking lager (at least I can do one of them).
Sean and some fans.I hope you are all well. I hear the club is going from strength to strength. Special mention to my friend Janet (that should slow her down for a while) and what a brilliant run by Lucy at Inverness, well done. Hope to see you soon when I do return, for all the new people who don't know me and all the others who have forgotten what I look like, I'm the tall, good looking bald guy. Well 'two out of three ain't bad' now there is a song.
ZAIJIAN. (bye)
Lots of love & kisses
Ricky.F.Report Ricky Fraser
Big CONGRATULATIONS to Sean - inspirational performances.
More hereApologies to Ricky and Sean this report should have been up weeks ago - trouble with the scanner. (I blame the trams.)
