Get to the finish line without losing your balance | Nicolás Pueta | TEDxJoven@RíodelaPlata

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Nicolás Pueta is a rugby player with a congenital malformation. In his talk at TEDxRíodelaPlata, Nicolás tells his story.

Well, good evening.

I'm a sportsman: I practiced
swimming, athletics, high jump,

I played basketball,
I play soccer with my friends

- used to play soccer with my friends -

and today I play rugby.

I've played rugby for a long time now.
You've noticed the crutch, surely.

You've seen I walk
with a kind of limp.

But don't be mistaken. I'm not injured.

It is a prosthetic limb that has helped me
walk since quite a while already.

I was born with a congenital malformation.

Congenital means it has nothing to do
with genetics,

that neither my dad is to blame,

nor did my mom smoke, drink alcohol
while she was pregnant.

Congenital is a medical term
for what is fortuitous.

It's nobody's fault.

My congenital malformation is expressed

in the size of my left femur

and the position on which my foot
came out of the factory.

I have a normal femur,

and a left femur the size of a chicken's.

My foot came out pointing backwards.

Well, I was born – obviously different –
and doctors turned up

telling my mom I wouldn't be able to walk,

that I would be confined to a wheelchair
for the rest of my life.

Well, an endless bunch
of other Greek tragedies

that, of course, as first-time parents
they were, scared them quite a lot.

Luckily there came a doctor that told them
something pretty simple:

"The only one who will show you
what this boy can

or cannot do is Nicolas," - me.

Luckily they followed this piece of advice
and decided to have their perfect family,

in some way, with their firstborn,
and carry on with it like anyone would.

Then, I learned, like we all learned,

like all of you also learned,
how to stand up when --

How do you say? - my senses,

my instinct, asked me to stand up.

I wanted to take my first step
when my instincts told me

I should take my first step.

In my case it was a hop.

Well, and rugby, why rugby?

My dad is a coach.

Then, since I was young
I used to go watch his practices.

I had contact with the players,
even since I was a child.

And I carried a normal life.

By normal, I mean, I walked with
a prosthesis from an early stage.

Since I was two, or one and a half,
when you start walking.

I rode a bike, like anyone does --
with a prosthesis.

And then came the moment to move on,

of undertaking common activities
with my friends, whom I know from school.

At age six, my life ceased to be normal.

Because instead of celebrating a birthday,
going to a soccer game and stuff,

I had to be in the operating room

because they wanted to see
the chances of stretching my leg.

They had decided, even though

they couldn't practice surgery
on me when I was born,

as the bones were still
not properly formed,

they could do it at that age.

They opened, they looked,
and they were wrong.

My bones weren't developed enough
to be able to do it.

We had to wait another year.

So, with recovery and stuff,
we waited until the following year.

The following year they decided
it was possible, and they placed

an intramedullary rod on me
as the first phase of these operations:

joining the femur to the hip.

Obviously, the magic didn't happen.

The leg didn't miraculously grow.

And after eleven months of recovery

and a couple more years,
I was operated again.

¿What for?

To start turning my foot.

Then, they thought, turning the foot
- remember it was grown this way -

would later get to be in this way,
and then grow the leg longer.

They could only reach here; bones can't be
that much stretched on a single operation.

And well, it's obviously
very frustrating to be 9

and not doing the normal things
the way I used to.

Things like athletics,
things like swimming,

things like playing a soccer match
with my friends.

For that time, my friends
were already playing rugby.

Rugby, which you already know
how much it means to me,

or you probably understand somehow...

And I wasn't being able to go
into the field with them.

One further frustration.

Well, not much time passed
before I got out of bed,

I left the wheelchair,
stopped using crutches

and could start wearing
the prosthesis again,

and I started trying to train
with my friends.

"No, no way," - kept telling me
the doctors and my parents.

"Why? For what reason?"
"You've just been operated.

What if what was done to you
breaks down the operation,

which was so expensive, the time that cost
you to recover and all, and, moreover,

if you break your good leg,
then we are screwed!"

Which is true.

But it was a risk I was willing to run.

But my parents weren't.

And my doctors, even less.

So I had to opt for
the less decorous way out

which is "sneaking" out from home,
to say it some way, to go training.

"What a diligent boy!

With just one leg he has to sneak out
from home to go training."

Well, the excuse was, "I'm going
to study to one of my friend's,"

"I've got a birthday," "I'm going to study
to some other of my friend's home,"

"I'm going studying",
"I'm going studying,"

You see, it's 30 classmates.

They repeated in many opportunities.

I wasn't doing that well at school.

So there was something I was doing wrong.

Either I was studying like crap,
or I wasn't learning anything.

So, of course, my dad, neither
slow nor lazy, realized

if I go away Tuesday and Thursday
and the guys train Tuesday and Thursday...

"This one's going training!"

Then came the issue of the matches.

Sure, every weekend
I was at one of my friend's place.

That's normal in a kid that is
13, 12, 15 years old.

Even older too, that we stayed

for the weekend at our friend's.

So the matches weren't the problem.

The problem was training.

Until, finally, there came

a trainer who said to my old man:
"I will help Nicolas,"

or "I want Nicolas to go into the field
because he really enjoys it."

And my old man, quite reluctantly,
ended up giving his thumbs up.

And then came my first official match.

The goal, let's say.

My summit.

And I went in.

Of course, with their words in my head,

with ankle support, shin pads, knee pads,
back brace, gloves, shoulder pads, helmet

and of course gum shield.

I was the Michelin dummy
entering like that and hopping.

Let's say I was crucified entering
a field.

As time went on, that fear --

which, of course, wasn't mine
but everybody else's --

was gradually left aside and I could,

or I can say, today I go in
without anything.

Not even bandaging myself.

Because it's also better for me.

I can run, or hop, faster.

I had the chance to play rugby
in the snow, for example.

I was invited to play a match,
not a charity match,

but an exhibition, where
we could play rugby in the snow.

I enjoyed it a lot.

I went to Europe for a while and played
in a club in England.

Getting to the club
with school partners was something.

Arriving to a club where I wasn't known
was completely different.

I come into the locker room.

"This is an Argentinean friend,"
says my English friend

who I had met in a rugby trip
I had already done to South Africa,

I had gone to England, we went
to Uruguay, Chile, and so on...

all to play rugby.

"He is a friend from Argentina
who comes to play with us."

One at the back says,
"He's playing with crutches, ha."

"Yeah, I'm playing with crutches," I say.

Because there are situations
in which you can explain

all this I'm saying now,

and situations where you can't.

If I get into a taxi, for example,
and the driver says, "Oh, soccer, right?"

"Yeah," what else could I say?

"Thing is I was born with a congenital
malformation, the femur, the chicken."

No! So I said, "Yeah, yeah,
I will go in with a crutch."

Well. I go into the
field, I start training

and the guys realized
I was just another guy.

Just that instead of running, I hopped.
That was the only difference.

Because my hands, I got them both.
And rugby is played with the hands.

So I had the chance to do that.

I had the chance to play
in the snow, in the Netherlands,

a place where rugby is, like here,
an international championship

with backgammon world cup.

And the truth is, I really enjoyed
those kind of situations.

I went to the world cup in France,
where I had the possibility to work.

In the next world cup in New Zealand
I will be participating.

And I was awarded with a prize.

The Spirit of Rugby, they called it.

Rugby's FIFA, which is the IRB,
gives me this award.

The Spirit of Rugby, and of course,
it produced quite a commotion

in our small world of rugby.

And when I came back to Argentina
a few years later,

the Buenos Aires Rugby Union

bestows me with a honorary cap.

A "cap" is a small hat given to certain
players for representing something.

I was representing Buenos Aires'
rugby spirit.

Same rugby they didn't let me take part
a few years before.

Not them, right?

But the truth is the path I walked

with this, I couldn't have imagined.

My only goal was to go into a rugby field.

It was going in with 14 other friends
to defend my club's shirt,

my school's too, and a lot of things
came along.

All just for a stubborn cripple
who wanted to play rugby.

So well, then what I can say to you --

and I wouldn't want to be
a fortune cookie or a candy with phrases,

is that life is just 10 percent
what happens to you,

and 90 percent what you do with it.

So, don't let anybody tell you
that you can't do

something you want to do.

If you really want to do it,

and are willing to give everything
to achieve it, you will make it.

You will be able to make it.

That's it.

(Applause)

Matias Martin: Anyway, he summed it up
because this is 12 minutes

and what he told me once
he came to the radio

weren't told, like, for example, soccer is
not the only thing you tell taxi drivers.

Nicolas Pueta: Well, no, sometimes you
have to make up more elaborated excuses --

MM: For example?

NP: Not only to taxi drivers.
In a nightclub, e.g., you are dancing.

You dance a little different.
"Oh, what happened to you?"

So there you pull out your guitar...

Of course...

"Well, what happens is I'm a surfer,
so we were in South Africa,

in Durban, a gorgeous city
but with a very dangerous sea,

and a shark came by and ate my leg."

"Come on!"

"I swear to god, a shark ate my leg!"

"Come on!"

"Alright, don't believe me, I 'll keep
dancing; it's the same for me

whether this happened or something else,
it's the same."

"Did a shark really eat your leg?,"
and they start asking around.

By now my friends say yes to anything
because they know that can happen,

or that I got run over
by a train or a car,

or that I had a motor biking accident
and other laughable situations.

MM: Alright Nico, thank you very much.
Nico Pueta.

NP: Thank all of you.
MM: Thank you.

(Applause)