Danish table tennis star nearly paralysed eyes heroic medal

PARIS: For Danish table-tennis player Anders Lind, just making the Paris Olympics is a triumph over adversity: after breaking two vertebrae in a serious car crash, he feared he would never walk again.

Now the 25-year-old is into an improbable Olympic last 16 and dreaming of a medal that would represent an extraordinary battle against the odds. When doctors x-rayed his spine after the crash in 2021, “they said maybe I’ll never walk normally again,” an emotional Lind told AFP after his win on Wednesday.

“They said maybe I’ll have some nerve damage, and that with the bones that broke, there was a 70-80 percent probability that I would be paralysed,” he added. Even if he could walk again, none of the doctors he saw said he would be able to resume top-level sport -- news he said sent him spiralling into depression.

“I cried for a week straight. Table tennis was my life... I don’t want to work in an office, I have too much energy, I need to be active,” he said. But with the help of a corset and zimmer frame, Lind began the long road to recovery that has taken him to performing in front of a packed Olympic crowd in Paris.

First walking 20 metres, then 40, then 50, he said he felt like an old man staggering along with his walking support. Progress was faster than doctors could have dreamed of, however, and three months later, he again picked up his beloved bat.

“Then I knew, OK, I’m going to be back. I don’t know how good I’m going to be, but I’ll be back,” he said. Despite having a metal rod inserted into his back, Lind said he suffers no major physical ill-effects from the accident, although he cannot bend as well as he used to.