Bautista Palacios. On the radio program, we spoke with Bautista Palacios, an athlete with a disability called lateral phocomelia, who told us how he got into sports and how he competes.
Tomás Modini
@ModiniTomas
The beginnings in sports
At the beginning of the talk on No Te Duermas, Bautista Palacios commented on his disability: “I have a bad formation of the muscles and bones, in this case it is in the hands. I was born with this problem. I got into athletics at 11 years old, I came from playing soccer but I didn’t like the environment very much, neither me nor my family. At home they play a lot of sports, and my father told me to go where he trained because the teacher knew me.”
“I went and I’ve been training since I was 11 years old but I’ve been doing it more professionally for two years. I wasn’t very good at football, but I didn’t like the environments for the little ones at all. Not because of the bullying, but because of the pressure they put on them. It didn’t happen to me, but I saw situations that I didn’t like,” he explained.
Regarding competitions, he said that “I started athletics first as a hobby until I started to like it. The teacher taught me with adapted exercises and I liked it, I never had any difficulty or anything” and that “when I go to compete with Río Negro I run 1500 meters, when I was younger I ran 100 or 200. And in races outside of competitions with disabilities I always run 5 to 8 kilometers.”
Competition with athletes without disabilities
Then, the interviewee emphasized participation in conventional tournaments: “There are conventional competitions and non-conventional ones, where the disability comes in. They are held every year except this one, which I think will not be held. In May I had one in La Pampa and I went twice to the Evita Games in Río Negro and then there are the competitions that I do separately. Luckily I did well, I did the long jump and came first, in the 1500 meters I had a cramp in my calves and I didn’t do well, and in the mixed relay there were four of us and we won that too. Río Negro came second.”
“The truth is that I don’t feel less than the others. There is a peculiarity because of my disability and it is that I am the only one in Argentina, at least that I compete,” she said.
Regarding this, she explained that “that is why it happens to me that when I go to compete for disability, and perhaps I come last, they still give me the first medal because they award by category” and that “I am the only one because nobody has my disability.”
The foray into social media and bullying
In the final part of the article, Bautista referred to his entry into Instagram where he uploads content showing how he writes or how he takes off his shirt: “My parents, especially my mother, and my friends also convinced me to show myself on social media. They told me that it would reach a lot of people and that it would be good.”
“I started a month or so ago. I found everything on social media, a lot of positive comments and none bad luckily. They make a joke or two, but some of them don’t do it with bad intentions and I don’t take them badly either,” he said.
He also admitted that “I take my disability as best as possible, every now and then I make a joke to myself and play with black humor.”
“I never received bullying, to be honest. I had only one case, which was in fourth grade when a boy said ‘fuck you’ to my face and told me that I couldn’t do it to him. I didn’t take it badly at the time and I talked to him about it. I accepted and loved myself as I was and I told him that it wasn’t good to make those kinds of jokes,” she concluded.
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