Latvian luger Juris Sics was told three years ago that he'd "never walk normally" again after a car accident all but broke him in half. Sics was on a podium in Sochi on Wednesday with his brother Andris, the two having won a bronze medal in doubles luge, four years after winning a silver medal in the event in Vancouver in 2010.
Yahoo's Eric Adelson has written about the crash crash three years ago in May that changed the brothers' lives. Juris lost control of his BMW in the rain, the car flipping several times before it slammed into a tree. Juris was about as close to death as you can be - and his brother Andris was mad. Andris' wife was due to deliver their baby any minute, and he was worried his brother was going to die on the same day his son was born.
Adelson writes:
The entire Latvian luge team donated blood. Juris needed a five-hour operation to save his life. He had 18 screws inserted into his pelvis to hold it together. The screws remain there to this day. He was in the hospital for months, and the surgeon told the family to forget about sports.
Juris refused to take his doctor's advice. He made two promises to his brother after his surgery. "First I am going to make a baby. Then we are going to win a medal."
Juris' son was born two years ago, on June 5. Andris' son was born on June 5 the previous year, two weeks after Juris' crash.
It gets even better: not only did Juris and Andris win another Olympic medal on Wednesday, as improbable as that was three years ago, they did so as Latvians on Russian soil, which was monumental in its own right. Adelson writes:
Latvia in itself is a minor miracle. The country consists of two million people gathered on a plot of land less than half the size of Louisiana. It was formed less than a century ago, then taken over by the Soviets, then invaded by the Nazis, then taken over again by the Soviets. A revolution began in 1987, when Juris was 4, and culminated in independence when the USSR fell in 1991. Latvians winning a medal on Russian soil is as improbable from a historical standpoint as Juris winning a medal was from a medical standpoint.
Andris calls his brother Juris "Terminator," for all the metal that was put into Juris' body after his accident. But that's about as far as they go when talking about that fateful day. The brothers don't speak about the accident. It's still too difficult; too raw. Andris came so very close to losing his brother that day, and talking about it is too hard for both of them, even after they won the Olympic medal Juris said they would.
"I'm just waiting to go into our room," Andris said after winning the bronze on Wednesday, "to cry."
