I met Dror Cohen 3 years ago a few months before the Athens 2004 Paralympics. He came to Athens to literally test the waters before the actual sailing competition. I was truly impressed by his determination and love for sports and life, which by the way, has played a pretty unfair game to him. Against all difficulties, the Israeli team came first in the competition and made us all who had worked with them really proud.

But getting the gold was apparently not the end of the road for him but a step to achieving new and higher goals. I admit I was not surprised to read that he is getting ready to take part in the Paris- Dakar race, one of the toughest ones in the world. No matter what the outcome he is definitely a winner from any angle you want to look at it.

From Israel21c:
Disabled Israeli athlete takes on Paris-Dakar rally
By Hannah Meyers June 03, 2007

It’s been a long, winding road that has taken 39-year-old Israeli extreme athlete Dror Cohen from combat planes to a wheelchair to the 2008 Paris-Dakar Rally, the world’s toughest off-road race.

By his own admission, Cohen has been a daredevil since he was a boy. “Whenever we had trips, I never went on the track, I always went off-road,” he told ISRAEL21c.

As he grew up, Cohen continued to seek out physical challenges, becoming an army combat pilot (F-16s and Skyhawks) and flight instructor. But then tragedy struck: an army car accident in 1992 left Cohen, then 24, paralyzed from the waist down. It seemed that his active days were over, and he would be relegated to a life of immobility.

At first, Cohen went into a dismal depression over his condition. Slowly, however, he began to exercise again, participating in the basic sporting activities that were available for the disabled. And then, while abroad, Cohen had the opportunity to try out skis and water-skis adapted for the disabled, and was thrilled to return to the adrenaline-producing sports that he loved.

“I need adrenaline; if I don’t have it sucked into my blood, I lose interest very quickly,” he explained.

But when he returned home to Israel, he found that extreme sports facilities for the disabled were not available.

***Get the rest at Israel21c***

Related posts

• Israeli Athletes Go for Gold in Beijing (0)
• Shahar Peer, Olympian and Tennis Star (0)
• Running Free in Tel Aviv (0)
• Riding Blind (3)
• President Pens Poem for Olympics (1)