He is one of the most important players in Class 3. While he leaves to be a promise to become a reality, he fights to have a place to first time to Paralympic Games and to fulfill his dream. But this is not the one: he studies to be a sport teacher and he teaches table tennis in a small school.
Who is Gabriel Copola? “It is too difficult for me to define myself, but I am a boy to fight everything in my life, I try to follow the road although the score would be right or wrong”. It is only a short picture about him. Gabriel Copola is 23 years old and he is one of the most important table tennis wheelchair players in Argentina.
Although he is very young, he is the leader in Class 3, and it is not because Victor Brandoli, one of his sports idols, decided not to continuous in the sports, it is for his winning lineage and unavoidable talent.
In addition to be a special person in the sport, he translates this “angel” to his life: loved, deared and well respected for the other players, coaches, study partners and all his family.
His history started thanks to Adriana Craffk and Miguel Copola. When he was a child, he showed his abilities to sports while he dreamt of becoming a number nine Boca Juniors’ football player. However, when he was 12, he had an accident on his bycicle and consequently, he is in a wheelchair. In this moment, he did not think that this was the end, on the other hand, it was the beginning of a new life.
“The first day in my wheelchair I felt estranges, but there were different things that helped me: the family, the table tennis, my friends. All these helped me to feel better, so I could do what I wanted and I forgot the wheelchair”, confesses Copola something that he believes unexplained. Moreover, he reveals that his life has not changed since he had the accident, because before the accident he did sports and now he is still doing them; he was talkative in the primary school, and today he is at the university. The only thing that changed was that he watches the things since his wheelchair. However, he states that this fact was education: “the difference is that I learnt to reflect a little more all things. In that moment, I was a child and I did not think and for this I had the accident. This blow did that I reflected, although sometimes I continue doing the things for the impulse that I had in my blood”.
This personality goes him to be perfect. From he started with Wheelchair Table Tennis, and he came to National Team, he is one of the assurance players in every training. This sacrifice derives in to travel around the world representing to Argentina. If he had not had the accident, would he have been an elite’s sportsman?
“It is not easy to talk about that what would been happened, to me, I was the best footballer, but today it is that I have and I am so proud about this. All day I answer to me if I had managed that I managed and this gave me the sport. I love it, is a pleasure to me to play Table Tennis. If one day it sports does not like anymore and it does not enjoy me in training, I will not continues with this. But now, I am funny and happy to do it”, confesses the protagonist, thanked about Table Tennis and he showing that the love to sports does not have any barriers.
With solidary soul, he wanted to share his experience of life with other people and to transmit them that he had lived. He studied to become a physical education teacher at La Matanza University since 2004. Two years later, he was the teacher of development Table Tennis Scholl from FADeSiR (Argentina Wheelchair Sport Federation): “One of thing that I want to teach the pupils is all I did in the sports, somebody can to live about this. I am so lucky because I work that I love it and not everybody can do it”.
At the moment, Gabriel is fighting to qualify for Paralympic Games Beijing 2008. But he chooses particularly weapons: “temperament, heart and personality”, although he states that he is “learning to balance because he must use the head and the heart”. In this combat to go for first time in his life to the most important paralympic competition in Asia, he will be end in number thirty place in the world ranking.
“Today Beijing does not let me sleep, today I am Beijing. Is my dream come to Paralympic Game, I am so tired that other people come back of this tournament and I could not live this. All sportsman wishes to go to Paralympic Games, there go the best players in the world, and I want to show everybody that I am a good player”, confesses self-seeker of glory. Satisfaction that, in his opinion, he can not manage in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the third Parapanamerican Games, because the pressure that himself put in this championship. But the number said that, in Class 3, he is the fourth in the ranking and he ended in this position in this tournament.
However, this disappointment does not change his feelings about this sport. “The Table Tennis I have it in my heart and my soul. It is an incredible sport, which you can learn the tactics, but it is a mental sport. It helps to drizzle you, although the players are a little crazy. The Table Tennis is all Gabriel Copola, and Gabriel Copola is all Table Tennis”, it is his best illustration.
Nota de Tapa de Revista RETO
Nº XXII - 30 de noviembre de 2007
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