The sportsmanship displayed by Cao Shengkang is truly admirable.
A blind man, after accomplishing the remarkable feat of a 24-day trek across four regions, has set sail on a new journey in life—windsurfing. Yesterday, the 2012 Aloha National Amateur Windsurfing Invitational concluded at Shenzhen’s Jinshui Bay. Among the 40 athletes, Beijing-based blind participant Cao Shengkang didn’t make it into the top eight, but he completed the race and was awarded the “Best Sportsmanship Award.” The championship and runner-up titles went to Tian Song from the Shenyang Club and Wang Yaming from the Aloha Club.
On Cao Shengkang’s business card, his occupation is listed as “massage therapist.” He is from Huaibei, Anhui. At the age of 8, a car accident robbed him of his sight. By 18, he had begun learning massage therapy, and in 2001, he started working at a massage parlor in Beijing, where he gradually developed a dream: to compete in the Beijing Paralympic Games.
Xu Bin, an associate professor in the Track and Field Teaching and Research Section at Beijing Sport University, was amazed that a massage therapist could have such courage, and decided to train him voluntarily. Xu Bin had never encountered a student quite like this—one who would switch disciplines whenever one didn’t work out, and then switch again when that didn’t either. Cao Shengkang trained in long jump, sprinting, and judo in succession, accumulating more and more injuries along the way, including a fractured and deformed rib on his left side. In the end, Cao Shengkang didn’t make it to the Paralympics, but the sport gave him confidence and helped him overcome the depression that followed his blindness.
In October last year, Cao Shengkang “heard” about Zhai Mo—a man who had completed a solo, non-motorized global sailing voyage—on TV, and asked him for help in training for windsurfing, a sport no blind person had ever attempted. When he first started practicing, he couldn’t turn in time, sometimes pulling the mast too far, and he couldn’t see the floating buoys or nets, often capsizing heavily into the water. Once, the stainless steel mast even left a hole in his forehead.
Hard work paid off, and eventually, Cao Shengkang mastered windsurfing. When he stood on the board and glided out to sea, “I felt excited, proud—the wind rushing past my ears, the feeling was just indescribable,” he said.
Because his right eyeball has completely atrophied and his left eye can only faintly perceive light, Cao Shengkang needed a guide to sail ahead of him and help him navigate during yesterday’s competition. Thanks to their teamwork, Cao Shengkang ultimately completed the race.