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Athlete back on his feet

YOU remember Mike Nishimoto. Well, maybe you don't. But I met him once, and he's one of those guys you don't forget.

He was standing, when I met him. That doesn't sound like much, but it is.

He had a walker, there with him, that day. But he was up on his own two feet. He was standing.

Let me explain.

Mike sounds more than a little bit like Dr. Phil, being an Arkansas boy. But the Navy brought him to Hawaii, and he's been home ever since. And then he became one of those biathlon, triathlon, marathon, swimming, biking, running guys.

And everything was going great until he was out training on the road one day and he got run over by a bus.

Really. True story. It was January of 2003 and it was terrible. Liver, kidney, lungs; lacerated, punctured, smashed. His L2 nerve was severed. What does that mean when your L2 nerve is severed?

It means he was lying in a hospital bed and a doctor told him he was paralyzed. He'd never walk again.

And on the day I met him, he was standing.

That was almost two years ago now. He was getting ready for the Ironman Revisited to benefit the Challenged Athletes Foundation, and he was going to do the swimming part of the race.

And he did.

Then, at some point, maybe a year or so later, I saw a picture of him on a bike.

"It took a long time to figure out how to do it," he says.

A week ago today he did the Haleiwa Metric Century Ride, 100K, 62 miles.

Earlier this month he did the JAL Honolulu Triathlon.

And it was probably about that time that the Star-Bulletin's Pat Gee handed me a news item. Mike Nishimoto was ... skiing?

"It was great," he says.

He was in Snowmass, Colo., for a week, shooshing all over the place thanks to the 19th National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic.

Skiing!

"It's something I've always wanted to do," Mike says. "But of course we don't get any snow here in Hawaii."

He and the guys had a great time, he says, tooling around on their sit-skis. Hearing one another's stories. The highlight was one of the last days, when there was an actual race.

But while skiing may be glamorous, it's the walking that gets me. He does that, now. He doesn't always need his cane, either. He'll forget it, things are going so great. He'll just walk off. Suddenly he'll realize he left it somewhere.

"I've lost a few canes in the last few months," he says.

People who haven't seen him in a while tell him he's walking a lot better. Except the last time they saw him he wasn't quite walking yet.

He's walking so well people forget that he couldn't!

"You ask me two or three months ago if I'd ever be able to jog the answer would be no," he says. "And here I am."

Twenty steps. Forty steps. Jogging now. Jogging!

Yes. That triathlon? He walked the running part. He walked it, every step.

"So it took FOREVER," he says.

Last month's Honolulu Triathlon was supposed to be a relay. He'd do the swim, then a friend would bike and a third would run. But Mike just kept going.

Hey, he's an athlete, you know. He's an athlete, and it was a race.

That's how it is with him. Forever forward. Jogging now. Skiing now. Another step every day. So many miracles the Vatican itself couldn't keep count.

This is how it's been from the beginning, since the doctor told him walking was over and all his training buddies told him to keep doing whatever he could.

"I have a really good group of friends who drag me out," he says.

He's planning to do the next half Ironman race, as much as he can before the clock catches him and he's disqualified from the rest of the race. He'll compete down in Samoa to show a new audience what's possible for those who have to walk with wheels.

Is attitude everything? No, of course not. Sometimes bodies just have limits. And Mike himself is the first to admit he's doing things now he never dreamed he'd do again.

But he is outside, and active, doing whatever he can. He plays wheelchair tennis now. He's always pushing, he never stopped competing. He's living life, loving it.

Skiing?

"It's very interesting," he says, "thinking back to where I was two years ago."