Laura Valeanu was born in Sibiu, Romania on the 8th January 1990 and attended the Samuel von Brukenthal National College from 2005-2009. From a very early age Laura was interested in sport taking up skiing at the age of five and in 1998 took part in her first ski competition winning a silver medal.
By 2004 she was competing in the Romanian National Championships she was regularly winning medals at all national competitions. Also in the winter of 2005 she became national champion in Giant Slalom.
On the 11 September 2006, while driving her new motorcycle Laura was hit laterally by a car and subsequently her right leg was amputated below the knee.
After the accident some friends visited her at the hospital and brought a gift of a DVD of the Winter Paralympics in Torino 2006. It was the first time that Laura had ever seen people skiing with disabilities and in fact in competitive racing, and her friends encouraged her by telling her she could go back to skiing. So that December she did try to ski again on the same slopes where she had began skiing when she was 5 years old. She remembers vividly: It felt strange but I was happy being back on the slope and tried hard to do everything perfect, although I knew it was going to be a long, long way. Actually it is only now in the last two months, that I have started to feel really comfortable back on my skis and to get back the feeling, almost like it was before my accident. Said Laura in 2013, while preparing for the Paralympic Wintergames in Sochi 2014.
In 2008 Laura’s mother had contacted Jamie Gillespie, a technician from Össur, a worldwide prosthetics organisation which is renowned for creating leg prostheses for elite athletes. Jamie was also an amputee after a motorcycle accident. Mrs Valeanu told him about Laura and he offered to come to Romania and build a new prosthesis for her, with a knee flexion and a brace specifically for skiing. (She still uses the same brace today though the prosthesis has become more sophisticated according to her needs). As everything was sponsored by Ossur they required, as recompense, some media attention and after they had finished her prosthesis Laura went skiing and a documentary was made by the firm which they sent to ProTV, a Romanian channel in 2009. This was the first time that the NPC Romania learnt of her.
In October 2009 Laura suceeded in entering the Ludwig-Maximilian Medical University in Munich and started a new life there, studying hard and anxious to prove herself but far away from everything she was familiar with. She admits to being overhelmed then; her life became chaotic and she had decided also to try and compete in Vancouver at her first Paralympic Winter Games. She was the very first ever paralympic skier to represent Romania at the Winter Paralympics. Vancouver changed my life completly, it was the best experience I've ever HAD! It gave me so much power and made me confident but it was also so difficult. The new skis, the Slalom skis were OK but heavy for my leg with atrophiated muscles by then and the Giant Slalom skis were really too much for me and for my leg with almost no muscles. I was not able to control that heavy 184 cm long ski; I had never had such a long ski in my whole life, even before my accident. I still was not experienced enough in skiing with my new prosthesis and I ended up with terrible open wounds on my stump but still I managed to finish 14 out of 23 in the Giant Slalom there.
Post-Vancouver
After Vancouver Laura had decided to give up competitive skiing as she wanted to apply herself to studying medicine in Munich and the physical problems in skiing seemed unsurmountable. But a family friend Reinhardt Benning, who always had seen her potential persuaded her not to quit totally. He promised to help her and made contact with the German Paralympic Team. In 2012 Laura started skiing and training with the germans. And soon her love for competitive skiing came back because now she had a team and support and that is so important even in an individual sport as skiing.
But the wounds were still occurring after every race or training session, so it was hard to ski better and to train a lot. Tina Röll, one of the German coaches, saw the potential in Laura and convinced her in early 2013 to write to Sally Wood-Lamont, President of NPC Romania in order to activate her IPC licence for competitive skiing. Sally, who had been the Chef de Mission in Vancouver in 2010 with Laura, talked to her and was convinced of her dedication after a discussion with the Head Coach of the German Paralympic Team, she helped Laura enter the World Alpine Skiing Championships in La Molina, Spain participating in the Slalom and Giant Slalom events, gaining 8th and 9th place respectively, an excellent result. With that she achieved qualification for the Winter Paralympic Games in 2014 in Sochi, Russia, the only Romanian athlete to qualify.
For Laura, La Molina was great: she met the Canadian team there and they gave her a lot of support, technical and psychological. Again the open wounds on the stump were so bad after skiing in La Molina that the bone and tendons were exposed and she suffered a lot of pain. So Laura decided that she had to obtain a new socket for her prosthesis in Munich and every weekend she went training and Mondays were spent with the technicians to resolve the pressure points on the socket that were causing the wounds! She explains: Slowly it got better and better, until I started to have almost no wounds anymore. Such a good feeling, almost as if I had my leg back for the first time after the accident, but there are still a lot of changes to do to the prosthesis so that it becomes perfect, but we are on the right road now.
In the summer of 2013 Laura became a member of the „Sportverein Germering e.V” and that helped her a lot to progress. In November and December 2013 Laura competed at the IPCAS Alpine Skiing competitions in Landgraaf and Pitzal. In Laandgraaf she won the bronze medal at the Slalom and in Pitzal
she won the silver medal at the Giant Slalom, bronze in the Slalom and finished a great weekend by winning 4th place in the Europa Cup Slalom event. These were excellent results for her preparation for Sochi 2014.
The training I did all summer long with my coach, Tina has helped me to get in really good physical shape and I am not tired during the race anymore, although there is still lots of work to do in this area. So all these things combined, made me obtain better results, and I am sure it can be even better. The most important thing is experience, practice and training: the more strong muscles and good physical condition you have, the more you can dominate those skis.
Now I can even handle 195 cm skis for the Super Giant Slalom. It's a matter of practice and of courage and of confidence, feeling confident with the prosthetic leg, as if it were part of you, and on the other hand a matter of time and patience and a matter of having professional people around you who can help and advise you. Paralympic athletes are the strongest people I've ever met, they just inspire the whole world, and I think that this fact should picked up by the media much more.
Winter Paralympics, Sochi 2014
Preparation for Sochi is going well and Laura is pleased at her results in 2013 demonstrating a remarkable progress. She has exams for her final year at the Medical University from the 11-12 February, so it will be hard work. She has received new ski boots with a better flexion and also a new knee brace so she has not a lot of time also to adjust to these equipment changes. She is aware that her that her skiing career has just started for real. There must be lots of changes to reach a high level and I want to go forward. I have big medal plans and if it does not happen in these Games in Sochi then I am really hopng for Korea in 2018. I only have one semester left and I will finish my studies; then 1 year practical and some years of specialisation, possibly in opthalmology. I will try to choose the best course I can combine with my life as an athlete and with my life later, so that it won't be too stressfull. Hopefully it will be easier for me to train. I plan to continue training and become better and better and try to reach that level where everything regarding equipment and the prosthesis is almost perfect, so that I can focus only on the way I am skiing, without blaming other things that need to be fixed! I think it is really important to have targets in life and to achieve your goals and that's what a paralympic athlete does! That is what makes your life full of up and downs but complete and thats what makes you stronger.
At the Paralympic Wintergames in Sochi 2014 Laura had pretty good results, she was ranked 5th in Slalom and and 7th in Giant Slalom.
Season 2014/2015 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, PANORAMA CANADA
This season Laura started to compete in speed events, showing really good results. Being constantly on the podium in Super G. At the World Championship in Canada Laura won the bronze medal in Slalom.
My bronze medal at the World Champs in Panorama was the best achievement ever. I cannot describe my feelings, it was a crazy mixture of emotions I've never had before, and I guess it is not even now yet clear to me that I am third paralympian woman world champion in Slalom right now. I kindly want to thank Martina Röll, Daniel Brode and SV Germering, I know I couldn't have made it without them. And of course many thanks to Sally Wood-Lamont and NPC Romania for the financial support.
This article is an extraordinary account of Laura’s courage, determination and ambition to become an elite athlete and I hope it will serve as an example for any other Romanian who wants to become a paralympic sportsman/woman.
Sally Wood-Lamont, NPC Romania
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