HSuddenly Watson made his international debut six months ago. He was ranked 30th in the world when he left Australia for the World Para-Powerlifting Championships in Georgia. When he returned a week later, he was in the top eight. If it was a big enough physical leap, the flight offered some of the intellectual gains he had made since then.
“It was an eye-opening experience to see how airline employees try to help people in wheelchairs and people with disabilities, let me tell you,” Watson said. “There were about 50 athletes in wheelchairs on one flight. I’m lucky I can still walk, but for others who have to go to the toilet, it takes a long time to move people up and down the hallway.
“And there was an athlete who was very disgusting to the owner of the air. I am simply saying that you do not teach able-bodied people that we are beautiful people, that we are individuals and that we are human. You give them a negative educational experience. ” This is their current encounter with wheelchair users. I’m trying to change it. We are not all like that. It’s just that we all have to approach it differently. Be kind to each other, be kind – we have all experienced a lot in the last two years.
“It simply came to our notice then. But in my life, disability was not in the foreground, it was not something we talked about when I grew up. I wish we could, but that’s my attitude, we are still normal. We are still individuals. We just have different ways of working. ”
It is already clear that Watson does not subscribe to stereotypes. Yes, he is a disabled man born with a bent leg and a thigh that has never been fixed, despite a series of “terrible” surgeries. But he is also an elite athlete who can move comfortably on the bench at 130 kg, is an administrator at a hospital in Brisbane, an Australian New Zealander with a Scottish mother and a Polynesian father (“there is a little Jamaican here”) and is proud. A gay woman who is the wife of a “rock star”, without her “I would be a lost sausage.”
Watson has just been selected to represent Australia at the Commonwealth Games. He will travel to Birmingham in July, less than a year after qualifying for para-powerlifting in the over-86kg weight class. At the age of 39, he found his “super power.”
The word comes from her late father, Charlie, who took her young daughter to the gym and bent her in front of a mirror. “As a kid, I thought it was funny,” says Watson. “I would watch him and all the body builders there. I remember stringer loneliness and striped tights. I think this is a very symbolic image of the late 80s. I was very impressed with the muscles. “
This intrigue was caused by an extensive collection of Joe Weider magazines that Charlie would read on the floor of his empty bedroom. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the man of the moment – or rather, his big chest was a global envy – and Watson learned the moves.
“We didn’t do a lot of footwork or anything like that because he didn’t mention my disability,” she says. “He didn’t really pay attention to this aspect of life, but I did a lot of upper body work with him. He says you can only focus on what you can do at the end of the day. I can’t go and run 100 meters. But I think I’m 40 and I’m going to the Commonwealth Games this year and maybe to Paris in 2024. “
A lot has happened in the meantime. Watson’s father died when he was 17 and 44 years old. His grandfather died during the Jovid-19 pandemic. He changed his name from Hannah to Hani, a tribute to the Niue language used by both men to enjoy rain and water.
He has been in and out of the hospital since the age of nine with problems with his bent legs. At the age of 11, doctors removed growth plates from his legs. If they continued to grow up, he says, he would be as tall as his father, which would make his situation worse. Today, he stands two feet five feet.
He underwent numerous procedures over the years and underwent an osteotomy at the age of 31. Surgeons sliced his left tibia, removed a piece of bone, straightened his lower leg, and placed a plate in the cavity. He then broke the femur in half, separated it, moved it, and added a larger plate to hold it straight.
The idea was for his bones to grow in the cavities. Six months later, when that didn’t happen, Watson went to the gym with his crutches to move a little. After five months of tiring work, he was able to partially lift his now-straight left leg. The right leg was still bent, which meant the second same operation.
Rehabilitation of the gym was working and he joined Watson Powerlifting Australia, which was perfect in the bench press.
“But finally something happened to my left leg, I couldn’t walk on it and they had to remove the metal support system there. They also had to remove the metal from my right foot because my legs wanted to bend again. I have a genetic predisposition that my cells simply want to shape in the direction they want to form bone. They looked straight, but inside they were growing in the direction they were born, which was quite damaging. .
“No one could stop it. This is not normal. Does this make me a little special? My surgeon was very disappointed and sad. I said, ‘Well, that’s what we’re doing.’ I could sit there and allow this disability to control my life, or I could focus on what I could do. ”
Watson chose the latter. His deteriorating disability was now severe enough to meet the parapauerlifting classification criteria. “I think it’s funny,” he said. I was quite disabled now and I was like “summer”. In May last year, he competed for the first time in Brisbane, and in November he introduced himself to Georgia with an Oceanian record of 120 kg in the +86 kg weight class.
When he was informed this month that he had qualified for Birmingham 2022, he “lost my banana peel”. His coach, Simon Bergner, tells him to look forward to Brisbane 2032. He aims to push 150 kg to Paris by 2024. The only athlete to be overweight in 2021 is the Chinese Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games gold medalist. Deng Xuemei was the first in the weight category of 157 kg.
This is more impressive than it sounds, especially due to the strict rules of the competition. Athletes should begin to hold the bar at arm’s length with locked elbows before lowering it to their chest, keeping it motionless there. He must then press it up evenly until his elbows are locked again and the judges give the green light for the shelf.
“It’s an exact machine,” Watson says. “It simply came to our notice then. This is the highest power sport. Other women who lift 20kg above me can lift without using their legs, or some people don’t have many nuclei because they are square. Consider the upper body strength they need to lift 120-125 kg.
Watson’s wife Kate, who got married in Queensland in 2018 and supported him in everything, reminds him that this is a big deal. Watson himself is indefinitely low-key, but he believes he has a role to play as a disabled athlete.
“We have a long way to go to support people with disabilities,” he said. “How do we talk about some things? There are people out there who have trigger words and don’t want to be your “inspiration” because of their disability.
“But why not?” If you were able to work, you would want to inspire someone else’s life. Why is it different? We are all human and we must learn to respect each other, to be kind to each other, and we will all learn together. “