The story of Marcelo Lusardi, the blind skater: "Skating made me regain my enthusiasm for living"
«I started to lose vision in my right eye in June 2015, during the San Juan festivities I saw a spot. They did tests on me and they couldn't find the reason until November when it also affected the other eye, then they did a genetic analysis and it turned out that I suffered from Leber optic neuropathy. It is a hereditary disease, but there were no cases in my family. In April 2016 I couldn't see anything anymore. I had just turned 18 and I didn't do anything, I didn't go to class, I was devastated. I was only encouraged by skateboarding. In fact, I forced myself to go outside, to use the cane, to go out with my friends because I wanted to skate again.
Marcelo Lusardi is 25 years old and is a skater. Born in Argentina, but emigrated as a child to Santiago de Compostela with his family, he makes a living from skating as he always dreamed of and, at the same time, as he never dreamed of. «When I was a child, skateboarding was my life. All my friends were skaters, I wore skate clothes, I watched skater videos, I played skate video games…. Now it's even more than that. Skateboarding made me reborn, it made me recover the enthusiasm for living,” confesses who has become a celebrity in the world.. With the nickname The blind skater, he has his own documentary on YouTube, more than 100,000 followers on Instagram – among them, Tony Hawk, the best skater in history -, he has participated in several exhibitions and has the support of brands from which lives. Between his disability pension and the ads, he doesn't need anything other than skateboarding.
But… How do you do it? I have the advantage of having seen and having skated with vision. Before I went blind I wasn't very good, but I already knew how to skateboard and do some basic tricks.. That helps me understand what's going on.. When I went blind I learned to walk and skate with a cane at the same time.. Now I make a mental map of all the elements that are in front of me and with the cane I feel. Although adapting was a slow process.
In fact, Lusardi thought he would never skate again.. When he began to lose his vision, at the age of 17, at ONCE they taught him how to use a cane, but he did not know that he could combine it with his passion.. «At first I tried it without a cane, without anything, and I was very scared. I remember the first time I jumped off a ramp, with all my friends next to me.. Or the first time I jumped a step. A friend yelled at me “Now!” and I did it, but it was very imprecise, very crazy,” he remembers about the process. Then came visual acuity, when he began to orient himself in the skate park through the noise of cars or the screams of children, tricks completed, skillful use of the stick, stairs, platforms or curbs overcome.
JAVIER SAAVEDRA
«Until one day I did a trick that I had not done when I saw. It was the host. “I can't imagine that: skating better when blind,” recalls Lusardi, the only blind skater in Europe or, at least, the only one known.. «Here in Spain I met a surfer, a blind boy, who took some skateboarding classes and competed with me. The experience was very cool. In the United States there are several, seven or eight, and they are even trying to do a tour together,” he says.
Would you like to compete? Skateboarding is now an Olympic sport and paraskate can be Paralympic. I would like to, of course, but it is difficult. I also already feel fulfilled. I appreciate what I do, I appreciate what life has put my way. I travel with my friends, I know new places to skate, and I feel a lot of love at exhibitions. I have met people who tell me that they have been moved, that they have cried.. When I made the documentary there was a little boom and now I just enjoy it.
In recent times, Lusardi has given several talks in schools and institutes in Galicia in which the message is clear: the obstacles are for jumping. «The children ask me if it is not dangerous to skate when blind and I answer that at most I get a scratch or a bruise. I like it if I am an example of something, although what I try to convey to them is that they take things calmly and that this is how even the most difficult thing ends up working out.. “It's a matter of desire,” Lusardi concludes before getting back on the skateboard that used to be his life and now is “even more than that.”