LAKE WORTH BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Cross-country skier Roberto Carcelen knows his dream of a return to the Winter Olympics for the 2022 Games in Beijing probably won’t happen.’
Realistically, it will be next to impossible for him to qualify. Still, he’s going to try.
And the point isn’t to win medals, beat a personal best or attain Olympic glory. The part-time Lake Worth Beach resident already made history nine years ago as the first Winter Olympian from Peru. If, somehow, he does qualify, the 48-year-old would be the one of the oldest athletes in the history of Olympic cross-country skiing.
He’d also be the first Olympic athlete to compete with Parkinson’s disease.
This isn’t the first time Carcelen’s mission has been defined by his steely sense of determination in the face of adversity.
In 2014, He was just days away from competing in Sochi when he broke several ribs in a training accident. His doctor told him that in order to heal, he’d have to drop out, which would mean Peru wouldn’t be represented in the Games. Ignoring the doctor’s orders, Carcelen chose to carry on.
Skiing the 15-kilometer course wasn’t easy; he could only use one arm due to his rib injury. To no one’s surprise, Carcelen came in last place. But as he neared the end of the race, he veered off course and grabbed a Peruvian flag from a fan, hoisting it high in a scene of Olympic spirit that earned him the title he wears gladly: “The man who won by losing.”
Sitting in the sunroom of his Lake Worth Beach home five years later, Carcelen reflects on that career-defining moment with a newfound sense of resolve.
“The point of this was just to create a story. A powerful story,” he said. “That no matter what your goals are, you finish it. Once you start something, you have to finish.”
-An unlikely Olympian
Carcelen’s story began long before that fateful day at Sochi. His zest for skiing can be traced back to the mountain passes of the Pacific Northwest.
It was love that brought him to Seattle in the first place. He made the journey from Lima, Peru, to marry his wife, Kate, in 2003. When Kate suggested her husband give cross-country skiing a try, Carcelen was less than enthusiastic.
“On the first day, I fell down like 20 times,” he recalled. “And after falling the 21st time, I got on the skis and I started gliding.”
It was the same “beautiful” feeling he’d been accustomed to as a surfer in Peru - the only difference, he said, was that the water was frozen. Carcelen was a natural. Three months later, he entered his first competition. After he crossed the finish line, someone asked him why he wasn’t planning to compete in the Olympics.
“He put that little seed in my brain,” he said.
That seed quickly took root. Confident in his natural athletic ability, Carcelen found a way to squeeze training into his day-to-day routine, tacking the title of full-time athlete onto his roles of husband, father and full-time business technology consultant.
In 2010, Carcelen competed in Vancouver, making history as the first Peruvian to participate in the Winter Olympics. On the heels of Sochi, he returned to Peru with a new-found celebrity status. Fans flocked to the airport to catch a glimpse of the man who “won by losing” and put his country on the Winter Olympic stage.
And it was then, at the height of his sporting career, that Carcelen decided it was time to retire. He never could have imagined the challenge that would come next.
-The new mountain
Carcelen was reading a book when he noticed the twitch in his right foot. At first, he said he didn’t think too much of it. But then, the tremors got worse. When they moved up his right arm and into his hand, he decided it was time to get help.
A year of uncertainty followed. Carcelen’s primary care doctor sent him to a neurologist, who wasn’t able to say with certainty what was causing the tremors.
He was young. He was a former Olympic athlete. The doctors, seeking another opinion, sent him in March to a movement disorders specialist in New York. It only took five minutes for the specialist to break the news that he had Parkinson’s.
“I felt pretty scared and devastated,” Carcelen said. “At least I knew what it was. And the most difficult part of this illness, other than the motor part that you see … is not knowing where you’re going to be in two years.”
Because Parkinson’s disease progresses differently for each patient, Carcelen isn’t sure how quickly his motor skills will deteriorate. There is medical treatment available to help patients manage their symptoms, and research has shown that exercise can slow the progression of the disease. And luckily, that’s something Carcelen is good at.
Of course, he can’t train quite like he used to. The hours are shorter, and age has begun to take its toll. Splitting his time between New York City and Lake Worth Beach means he’s far from the mountain passes, so Carcelen has learned to get creative when it comes to training.
In New York, he glides through Central Park on roller blades, ski poles in hand. Here, he finds solace not only in the laid-back atmosphere of Lake Worth Beach, but out in the water on his surfboard, where he can build toward the physical condition he’ll have to be in to have a chance at making it to the Beijing Olympics.
“I’m going to try to qualify, and then to use it as a springboard to raise awareness on Parkinson’s disease,” he said. “Qualifying is going to be close to an impossible task. But at least the journey from now to the 2022 Olympics, I can generate some awareness.”
-’Todo es posible’
If it wasn’t enough to train for the Olympics, work as a consultant for Microsoft, maintain a home life and cope with a degenerative disease, Carcelen also has a passion project: the eponymous Roberto Carcelen Foundation.
The idea for the foundation had been planted after Vancouver, but Sochi helped him secure the celebrity needed to make it a reality. With programs in Washington, Peru and West Palm Beach, the foundation focuses on computer-science education for underserved young adults, teaching them to code and other skills needed for in-demand STEM careers.
The program has taught more than 500 students since its inception in 2014, and Carcelen has even been in talks with Mayor Pam Triolo to bring the program to Lake Worth Beach.
With Carcelen’s recent diagnosis, the foundation has taken on a secondary focus: Parkinson’s disease research and awareness. When Carcelen first received that life-altering diagnosis, he knew he had two options.
“One to hide,” he said. “Or, one to use my status to bring attention to Parkinson’s disease.”
Working with Peru’s National Institute of Neurological Sciences, Carcelen and his foundation co-founder, Marcelo Freire, have gathered 10 years’ worth of data on Parkinson’s patients in Peru.
The problem is, it’s all on paper. So the foundation is building a data application that will allow researchers to run real-time analytics and examine trends that could be key finding new treatments and maybe even eventually a cure.
Today, Carcelen is considering a future collaboration with The Michael J. Fox Foundation. There’s even a feature-length documentary film currently in production about Carcelen’s quest for another shot at the Olympics.
It goes without saying that the cross-country skier, who has defied so many odds, has a new mountain to climb. But he’s going to carry on with the same unwavering optimism that got him across the finish line in Sochi five years ago.
“That’s what I’ve learned. That the way of overcoming challenges - to grow - is just to turn things around and step outside your comfort zone,” he said. “That’s where you see all these possibilities and opportunities.”
Today, he lives by one simple motto: “Todo es posible.”
Everything is possible.
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Information from: The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, http://www.pbpost.com
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