Namita Nayyar:
Five travel destinations on your wish list.
Emanuele Di Marino:
New York, Australia, Los Angeles, Miami, Bahamas.
Namita Nayyar:
Tell us a day in the life of ‘Emanuele Di Marino’.
Emanuele Di Marino:
I’m usually the first to wake up as I have the task to take care of our breakfast. So usually I woke up around 6:30 am to start making breakfast for all of us, these include eggs, fruit and carbohydrates. After that I usually take my son to school and then I go to train with my training group.
Later on I need to have some lunch, physiotherapy and go back to school to pick up my soon. Usually I stay with him at the park with his friends for a bit before go home, buy something for our dinner and then make dinner again! Sometimes I need to have some Physio treatment before bed, thanks to our great medical partner Wintecare that take care of us every day!
Namita Nayyar:
During the Covid pandemic what was your fitness routine to remain fit in those challenging times?
Emanuele Di Marino:
During covid we stayed in my home town, Salerno, for almost all the pandemic period also because I was doing my lawyer practices in my uncle studio.
Train in this period was very difficult and challenging but we managed to do a good job thanks to my South African strength and condition coach that was able to give me different program and different exercises for every day of training.
Of course it was home based training with elastic band and body weight exercises plus something in my parent’s garden but very very limited till our government gave us the possibilities to train outside as Elite Athletes.
Namita Nayyar:
Quote you live by.
Emanuele Di Marino:
Never give up!!
Namita Nayyar:
While playing professional sports, athletes often face injuries and other difficulties. Would you like to share tips on how to cope and make a comeback after an injury?
Emanuele Di Marino:
During the carrier all athletes faces lot of difficulties, including injuries, explicitly if you train as an elite athletes. Every time I was in a difficult moment I always tried to never give up and to do whatever is in my power to come back even stronger than before! Is not easy to do like is to say, but this is something I have always do, even with some down moment. Have your parents, friends and your close persons near you with lot of positive vibes can only help you in the process.
Namita Nayyar:
What do you wish to say about the website Womenfitness.net and the message for its visitors?
Emanuele Di Marino:
Follow the Paralympic sports! And stay always active while have a good nutrition plan, these are the secret for a healthy and wellbeing body!
Namita Nayyar:
Advice and motivational words to the inspiring and budding Paralympic athletic boys, who all are your fans and would like to know from you for their climb to the ladder of success in the field of Paralympic track and field events.
Emanuele Di Marino:
You have to go out of your home and enjoy your life! Nothing comes without hard work, dedication and perseverance. Train hard but smart, recover, eat and do this again!
Arjola Dedaj in talk with Namita Nayyar President Women Fitness Media Group
Namita Nayyar:
You were born in Albania and later migrated to Italy twenty-six years back. Where did you have your early education? Aged just three, you were diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a group of inherited disorders that leads to progressive sight loss, even blindness, with the ability only to distinguish between light and dark. You made your Paralympics debut by lining up in the women’s 100m T11 in Rio de Janeiro. You became a European medal-winning sprinter and long jumper. You won two silver medals (long jump and 100m) and one bronze medal (400m) at Euro 2014 in Wales, followed by a bronze in the long jump and 200m at the Paralympic European Championships in June 2016 year. This later propelled your career to the height where you have been at the top of the world as a Paralympic athlete and won long jump T11 gold at the London 2017 World Championships. Tell us more about your professional journey of exceptional hard work, tenacity, and endurance.
Arjola Dedaj:
In Albania, I spent my entire childhood until adolescence. The concept of disability during that time, especially in that social fabric where the culture of diversity was still too backward, was not well received, and obviously, it was not easy for me. The condition of disability made me feel different and inferior to others, and growing up with these feelings is certainly not encouraging to face the different stages of one’s growth peacefully. From difficulties at school because there were no tools and knowledge to support you in the journey, to adults from who teaching and imitation start considering you useless to society. In this way, those who had some difficulties were marginalized by society.
At the age of 17, I landed in Italy carrying this baggage of feelings with me, and so I continued to hide my difficulty in seeing by pretending to be distracted, absent-minded, etc., about things I couldn’t see and couldn’t distinguish from a certain distance.
I had to immediately enter the world of work, encountering people along the way who understood my difficulty and came to help me, appreciating my abilities. After a few years, I came into contact with the Institute for the Blind in Milan, and there the world opened up to me. I saw people who had my same disability, and in their faces, I immediately perceived a sense of serenity and awareness of who they were as individuals and not as disabled. From there, the spark ignited in me, and I said to myself: “if they can do it, I can do it too.” Since then, I have taken control of my life and given it a new direction. First of all, I worked on myself, on the awareness of who I was, on accepting my disability not as a defect but as a characteristic of mine. Accepting oneself before being accepted, this is the key to well-being for me.
I no longer hid from others and started using the white cane, also because my vision was deteriorating more and more with time, and it was not only a way to make myself recognized by others and say be careful, but also a security for myself. There’s no point in hiding it; from here on, my life was reborn again, and I got back into the game in all fields, from academic to sports and professional paths. Sport, although started late for the reasons mentioned above, was for me the greatest passion that saw me start as a hobby from dancing, to blind baseball, and finally to athletics, which then became the main piece of my sports journey, encompassing passion, dedication, and sacrifice.
Disclaimer
The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
