VSTo run a marathon on one leg is not twice as difficult as on two legs. It’s much worse. Parts of the body that are usually little stimulated in able-bodied joggers must be activated, more than reason: the abdominals, the top of the remaining thigh, the forearms clinging to the crutches… “The energy expenditure is monstrous”, testifies Guy Amalfitano, knowingly. This 59-year-old femoral amputee embarked on an extraordinary challenge on March 17 in Port-de-Lanne (Landes): to run a marathon a day for one hundred days, or 4,300 kilometers in all, by force alone. of a single calf.
Clocked by a bell-foot that he inserts between two cane movements, this tour of France is his third, after those he made in 2011 and 2013. The one-legged man also climbed the Eiffel Tower in 2016 and crossed the Canada from east to west in 2017. “Kangaroo” has been his nickname since someone on the internet named him Skippy, after the animal hero of a 1960s Australian television series.
“I am not handicapped in any way: I have always done what I wanted to do”
“Even my parents call me Kangaroo”, he confides that day in Loches (Indre-et-Loire), on the way to his charitable journey. After each arrival, the man sells T-shirts and stuffed animals (kangaroos), in partnership with a charitable association in the region visited. In New Aquitaine, he was able to collect 2,600 euros for Médoc Enfance Handicap. In the Centre-Val de Loire region, the partner association – whose name we will keep silent – has unfortunately ” forget “ that the champion was passing…
Guy Amalfitano was 17 when his right leg was amputated due to a cancerous tumour. His disability – a word he hates: “I am not handicapped in any way, I have always done what I wanted to do”, he asserts – did not prevent him from exercising a “classic” job, as manager of the water service then of the public markets of the city of Orthez (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). He says he is “thriving in work”and not necessarily in sport, despite three participations in the Paralympic Winter Games in alpine skiing (in Innsbruck in 1984 and 1988, in Albertville in 1992).
Titanic Bulbs
It is in memory of the Canadian hero Terry Fox, author, in 1980, of a transnational odyssey of 5,373 kilometers with an artificial leg, that Guy took up the marathon, but without a prosthesis. Rubber super-shock absorbers now cover the end of its crutches; attached to the handles, carbon shells follow the shape of his forearms. The repetition of the movements, however, could not prevent the formation of titanic blisters in the hollow of his palms, a few days after the departure. “On the pain scale which goes from 0 to 10, I was at 15. It threw me right into my shoulders”he grimaces again.
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