“You don’t have your leg anymore.” This sentence from his father still rings in Ermin Jusufovic’s ears. Twenty-seven years after stepping on a mine, he is one of the pillars of the Bosnian sitting volleyball team, which is aiming for another medal at the Paralympic Games in Paris.
“The accident happened on May 19, 1997. I was not yet 16 years old,” the player, now 43, recalled in an interview with AFP in Sarajevo.
In his village near Lukavac (northeast), twelve days before his sixteenth birthday, the teenager was ploughing the land, accompanied by his mother and his twin brother. The war had ended more than a year ago.
Instead of taking a detour, “between 30 and 40 metres more”, to avoid a “suspicious plot (…) which was on the front line” during the war (1992-1995), he had decided to cross it.
“Something happened. I didn’t realize it was a detonation. I fell to the ground and remained motionless. I smelled black powder (…) a mine,” says Ermin Jusufovic.
Waking up in the hospital bed is the next image he remembers.
– “You have to accept this” –
“I had asked my parents if my leg had been cut off. I knew it couldn’t be saved, the way I saw it. My mother was stammering something, then my father said: ‘You don’t have your leg anymore. You have to accept that, sooner or later. You’ll have to live with it.'”
“Then came the tears and everything that is normal in these circumstances, for six months. Then came the first prosthesis and the first tears of joy.”
A few months later, he was spotted at a medical facility by the coach of the local sitting volleyball club. He told him to come over.
“I said okay, I’ll come and see. Then, at home, I said to myself, no chance. Unthinkable to be seen without a leg.” Today, it is with a smile that Ermin Jusufovic describes these “stressful, unnatural situations, at the beginning.”
Mine accidents after the war left 624 dead and more than 1,150 injured in Bosnia, according to official data.
The meeting during a convalescence with Safet Alibasic, today his teammate in the national team, was a turning point. He decides to go with him to his first training session.
It was in 1998. He remembers the “difficult” training sessions, very physical and often without the ball. But above all, a great motivation. He constantly did exercises at home and lost 30 kg in a year, to reach a perfect weight.
– “The best version of myself” –
Three years later, Ermin won the gold medal at the European Championship in Hungary with the national team. Since then, he has not missed a single major tournament.
Bosnia is the only real opponent for Iran, a giant in world sitting volleyball with seven Paralympic gold medals and two silver medals in nine appearances.
Of its 16 gold medals, Bosnia has won two at the Paralympic Games (2004 and 2012), eleven at the European Championships and three at the World Championships.
Ermin Jusufovic is counting on a victory against Iran in the final in Paris, and his third Paralympic gold medal.
In 23 years of sporting career, has he gone through periods of doubt?
“There were times when I even thought about giving up. I wondered if I needed this,” admits the father of two, who works for the cantonal administration in Tuzla in the field of sports and youth.
“But one thing I am certain of is that I am the best version of myself on the sitting volleyball court (…) That’s what keeps me going in life,” says the man whose sport has allowed him to travel the world, make friends and have a family whose support is “crucial” to him.
Russian/but
