With Gratitude For This Powerful Inspirational True Story
Here is a video titled, ” With Gratitude for this Powerful Inspirational true story…Never give up!.”
The text in the video was not 100% correct. The NY Times reported the following:
Derek Redmond could remember trying to get up, trying to break away from the stretcher bearers in some crazy effort to qualify in a 400-meter semifinal with a torn right hamstring.
“It was all animal instinct,” Redmond said today, at the Olympic Village. “I kept thinking I could still catch the other runners. I didn’t want to quit. I’m a very selfish person.”
And then, the 26-year-old British runner was suddenly on the track. But he rose in terrible pain, and maintaining his lane, Redmond resumed his quest merely to finish. He was soon joined by his father, a casual apparition in T-shirt, khaki pants and ball cap.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jim Redmond told his son, after he climbed down from the stands, past the men with badges. “You don’t have to put yourself through this.” Determined to Finish Race
Derek Redmond informed his father that he was going to finish this Olympic race, because he never started the one in Seoul, South Korea, four years earlier. He dropped out in 1988, just 90 seconds before his first heat, because of a hamstring problem. That would not happen again.
The son limped ahead, and his father gave him a hand, an arm, a few words.
“Well, then,” Jim Redmond told his son, “we’re going to finish this together.”
The Redmonds went halfway round the track, an eternal 200 meters, Derek’s head buried at times into his father’s shoulders. The crowd at the Olympic Stadium roared at the spectacle. Father and son fended off security guards and overzealous track officials, who came at them in waves. A Man With a Mission
“I don’t speak Spanish,” Jim Redmond would say, “and I wasn’t going to be stopped by anything.”
Derek’s coach, Tony Hadley, saw all this and started bawling. He forgot to click his stopwatch. The watch just kept running.
Father and son trudged across television screens everywhere. Back in Northampton, England, Derek’s mother, Jennie, wept when she saw her son sobbing in pain. She remembered that the last time he looked so unhappy was when he did not get a chopper bike for his sixth birthday. Derek’s pregnant sister, Karen, went into a false labor.
On the day after all the commotion, Redmond could smile at his new status as Olympic hero. He said he was embarrassed by all the attention, all the congratulatory messages in his computer. He was even embarrassed by his father, who had worried for weeks that his son would injure himself again in Barcelona.
Source: NY Times
Have you felt like you wanted to give up? Stick with it a little longer – you may be close to the finish line. You will feel grateful for hanging in there!
Be Well.
Paul.
The Gratitude Guru
Wow! Thank you Paul, this came to me at at a perfect time!
I had and still have goose bumps!!
Goose bumps? Hope they are good ones!