The Words of the Beltrami Family
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The Words of the Beltrami Family |
Pier Angelo Beltrami won a silver medal in the ninth Paralympics (a division of the Olympics for disabled athletes) held in Barcelona, Spain in September 1992. Wearing an artificial limb to replace the leg he lost after a motorcycle accident in 1969, Pier Angelo began riding the bicycle in 1985 on roads in and around Belvedere, in Tarrytown, New York. Here he describes the physical and spiritual challenges he overcame in order to win a medal in the fifty-five kilometer race and bring the victory to his hometown, Darzo, Italy. In this time of creative finances an interesting thread runs through this story of how this trip to the race and hometown was paid for. Pier Angelo's ethnic church involvement has led him to regularly attend the Catholic-Italian church near him and belong to the Italian club there.
In 1988 I went to Korea to compete in the eighth Paralympics; I got a bronze medal in my first international bicycle race. Ever since then I have tried to maintain a training routine. Every year I go to the national races but rarely get better than third place. However, in 1991 I came in second and in 1992 I took first place. I didn't really think I would be able to go to Spain for the Paralympics. My wife, Mary, had given me the okay to go to Korea in 1988, but I had promised her I would never do that again. In May 1992, I entered the nationals in Ohio, leaving it up to God that if I was meant to go to Barcelona, the qualifying would take place in Ohio.
Surprisingly, the competition was stronger than in other years. The races for handicapped people are divided into classes according to the severity of the disability. In my class this year, there were five new people, including one strong competitor from Colorado. In 1988 I had entered the competition without sponsorship, but 1992 was a very difficult year for me financially, so I sought sponsorship. A bicycle distributor built a special bike for the time trials, and I came in first in that category. On the road race, however, I came in third, because my equipment was pretty old and heavy.
I saw Kyle, a good friend from four years ago, and testified to him about Father and my way of life. I told him a little secret of racing: to pray not for your own victory, but for the safety of everybody and for God's will to be done. If we are meant to win, we will win. Certainly we are going to try our best, but we don't have to be disappointed or blame somebody if we don't make it. Do your best and just respect others.
There are three races in the national competition. I won the first race, and Kyle won the second. Because I won the first, time trial, everybody was looking at me and thinking, "This guy is stronger than anybody else, so let's let him do the hard work." In the second race, about thirty miles long, the others let me stay in front and cut the air, which is a lot more exhausting than being behind somebody. The other riders never let me rest. They let me keep the lead until the final lap, and then they overtook me.
Before the third race, two friends of mine said, "You weren't treated fairly; therefore, we are going to help you." It had been raining and the course was wet.
The race was scheduled for eight o'clock Sunday morning. I said the pledge and then stayed up, praying for the race. I had serious doubts and asked Mary, "Do you really want me to do this? If I win this race, I qualify to go to Barcelona. That means a sacrifice for you." Telling myself that I should drop out because I was no longer young and I might be endangering myself and my family, I went back to bed.
The other riders came by thirty minutes before the race and said, "What are you doing?" I replied, "Oh, I don't feel good. I'm not going. You guys go ahead."
They all said, "Wait a minute. If you don't go to this race you are not going to be able to qualify for Barcelona." "That's okay," I responded. "You go."
Then Mary told me, "Wait a minute. Ask God which way He wants you to go. Why have you been praying all this time? You may not feel good, but you have to overcome it. Yes, there has been rain, but you have to trust God. If He doesn't want you to go to Barcelona, you won't win the race. So what do you have to lose? Go."
Since she put me on the spot, I took my bike and went down to the starting line. During the race, it started to rain and everybody was very cautious. The competitors were concerned about one another because the course had become very slippery and very dangerous. My friend fell down on the next to the last lap.
During the last lap, I hit the curb, went on the grass and came in fourth. I thought I was disqualified, not knowing that the point count is based on the total times for all three races. I came in third overall and qualified to go to Barcelona.
Somewhat reluctantly but also happily, I accepted the position on the team. That was May, and I had to quickly prepare myself for the trip to Barcelona and the international competition on September 12.
I had had some fears because of my age, my lack of intensive training, and lack of advanced equipment. I prayed to be able to find sponsors. Even if I qualified, unless I could find sponsors to pay for my trip and the equipment, I could have never gone. Amazingly enough, all these things came together.
As we were closing down our office, I had less and less time to train. I was working very late every night, sometimes until midnight or even overnight, to finish up the jobs; then I still had to find time to train and to pray. This time I could not go to Colorado for forty days to train, as I did four years ago. I could only go for a week. For me to gain a medal in this race would be a major miracle, because I did not have the consistent preparation of riding thirty to fifty miles a day. However, a sponsor came through and a friend invited me to stay at his house in Colorado, so I didn't have to spend money for a hotel. Furthermore, he offered to train me for the week I was there.
When I was in Colorado, another teammate, Rex, came out for the Celestial Seasonings Tea Race in Vail, Colorado. It was a time trial, about fifteen miles, all uphill. That was the hardest race I ever raced. I had been in the mountains for only four days, and my cardiovascular system was not quite in shape for that kind of effort. However, I tried my best. Rex started after me, but he passed me and beat me by about two minutes. That alone told me I was not going to do well in Barcelona.
I knew that in 1988 my forty-day prayer condition and training before going to Korea were instrumental in getting a good result. This time I did a forty-day prayer condition at 5:30 am to find sponsors and for God to use me. Nicholas Buscovitch had told me that Hyun Jin Nim said his reason for going to the Olympics was to testify about Father. Therefore, I wrote a letter to Hyun Jin Nim explaining that I was going to go to the Paralympics and wanted to testify about Father and the Principle to my team members.
In one situation after another I realized that if you put yourself in a situation as an offering, God will use it the best way that He can and put you in touch with many people. A week before going to Barcelona, I was invited to the White House vice president's office to receive the American flag to bring to Barcelona. The national handicapped office official said, "Would you mind going to the White House to receive the flag as a representative of the team?" This was also the year of the quinque-centennial of Christopher Columbus' voyage to America. He was Italian, of course, but he traveled to America from Spain. I was an Italian going to receive the American flag to bring to the Paralympics in Spain.
I felt great responsibility for testifying to people. I told Vice President Dan Quayle, "No matter what the media says, there are many people out there who feel the same way as you do about the need for supporting the traditional American values of family, God, and love within the family." He looked at me and he was glad to hear that.
I gained confidence during the forty-day prayer condition. When you are training for a race, you prepare to give a hundred percent, or even a hundred ten percent, of yourself; it's like facing judgment day. Sometimes I couldn't sleep because I was so nervous. However, as the days progressed I became more confident and less nervous. I really felt God and the spirit world telling me, "That's okay; don't worry about it. You will do fine."
When we gathered in New York on August 29, I only knew two people on our team. Something developed in my consciousness, and I realized that being a veteran of this kind of event put me in the position to teach the other guys. Another teammate was more experienced than myself in cycling. However, when we landed in Barcelona everybody looked to me, because I speak Italian, which is very close to Spanish, and I could converse with the Spanish people. Therefore, I became the spokesman for the team. If somebody needed something they came to me.
The team that I found myself in charge of included nine people from all over America. After a while we started to share very deep things. At night we didn't watch television or go to a movie. We stayed together and created a very good feeling of unity. Even those who had taken advantage of me during the race in Ohio became very good friends. At first!there was a feeling of competition and. mistrust, as people were thinking, "I don't want to get too close to this guy, because I am going to beat him." At the end we were all helping one another. I went out of my way to try to get them the official U.S. Cycling Federation team jerseys from the manufacturer in New Jersey. They saw that effort and they appreciated it.
They asked, "Why are you doing all this?" Because of our training, it is natural for us to take care of people. We met every night, and I would share about myself and some of the spiritual experiences I had had in my life and how I got into cycling. Some of the people were amazed; others could not understand what I was saying.
Some started to ask me questions about prayer. I told them that prayer is my daily bread and that we should not just pray to win but pray for, everyone to have a safe race.
During that time my spiritual children came to see me from Germany and Switzerland. When the team members saw Luciano Fenoli and Franco Bolandini so full of concern for my preparation and so devoted to praying for everybody's safety, they were very impressed. One of the American team members planned to go on a bike tour from Spain to France, Switzerland, Germany and down to Italy. Luciano and Franco offered to house him and take care of him when he came through their country.
They did that, and they showed him tapes of the Principle. When he came back to America he called me two times and couldn't stop talking about how great an experience it was for him.
In preparation for the race, my two spiritual children, together with their own spiritual child, did an Il-Jeung prayer on the course and holy salted it. The police stopped to ask them what was going on. The course was more difficult than in Korea and even more difficult than the Olympic course for able-bodied contenders, because it contained many hills and tight curves.
In the Olympic village there were about five thousand disabled athletes from all over the world. Some of them were very impressive. They were very strong athletes. One guy ran the hundred meter dash in 10.2 seconds, even though he is missing a foot and wears a prosthesis.
The record for that distance is something like 9.9 seconds. The other five competitors came in half a second behind him. It was very competitive and very good to see. People take these Paralympics very seriously, and the athletes train very hard. It is a world-class athletic competition. Some of the athletes are very principled, disciplined, good people.
That day, I did pledge at five a' clock and took some ginseng. That's my formula for success: Pledge, ginseng at 5:30 am, 7:00 am and again just before the race. The ginseng was, provided for me by the Spanish family. Their support was another form of sponsorship.
When we got to Barcelona, Rex, my teammate who had beaten me in the Vail competition, felt very cocky and I felt rather unsure of myself. However, on the day of the race I wasn't nervous at all, while Rex was extremely tense.
Three times during, the race I almost went down. Once I tangled my handlebars with the Austrian rider's, just before a curve. The second time, someone in front of me put on the brake and I slammed into his back wheel. The third time, a Korean rider in front of me slipped on the wet pavement and crashed.
Rex had told me, "I am going to try to go solo about the fifth lap." I said, "Fine, if I can help you, I will." When the gun sounded, the French team made a strong start. Rex and I took turns chasing them. Then the Spanish guy took the lead and we chased him down. On the seventh lap Rex took the lead and I stayed behind trying to keep other riders back, but going all out by himself was hard; he couldn't sustain the pace, and we caught up with him.
During the last lap, I was exhausted. I thought I would not make it, because I was so tired. I drank two bottles of water during the race and I was still thirsty. I drink while racing because I need to replenish all the water lost through sweat.
Then as we came to the last lap, I felt, "Welt Heavenly Father, what shall I do?" Everybody was watching each other very closely. I was at the back of the pack. Everybody was waiting for somebody to make a move.
About a kilometer from the finish line, I felt a voice say, "Go, now, go." So I did. I pushed like crazy. There was a steep hill before the finish line. Everybody was going very strong. I realized that we were all going up that hill very fast. After reaching the top, there was another three or four hundred meters to go before the finish line. I pushed as much as I could when I saw a way open in front of me, and I could get through. There was one guy beside me and one behind me. When we got to the finish line I realized that I had come in second.
The guy who came in first was an Austrian, twenty-six years old. They were all in their late twenties or early thirties.
I was forty-two years old, a grandpa. However, once I finished I felt an incredible, overwhelming joy. I felt so happy. I started to cry for joy. I didn't get the gold, but it was so close. I never had a finish like this.
At that moment I felt God smiling at me. During the race I told my spiritual children to pray for safety. They were having a prayer condition for everybody to be okay while I was racing. Every time I finished a lap, they went, "Go! Go!" On the final stretch you don't see anything but what is in front of you. I realized somebody was beside me, but I only saw the finish line, the goal. After crossing the finish line I crashed on the sidewalk. I was in pain physically, but so happy inside that I felt this overwhelming emotion flood over me. My spiritual children came and they were crying; we were all crying together. The ginseng representative in Barcelona was so happy. I really felt it was a total surprise.
Every time that I do something like this I have so many doubts and have to overcome so many conflicts. Mary had to sacrifice a lot for me to go and train. I would come home, see the kids, put them to bed, and go out and train, sometimes late into the night. I didn't have the luxury of special time for training.
In spite of all this, I learned that when we are sincere and offer whatever we do for God, He can do it. God can use anything and maximize it to His advantage.
I keep reminding myself of that when I see obstacles and face difficult situations. We have to feel that God and True Parents really want a victory for us. All we have to do is make the initial effort. Everything else will be taken care of.
After I lost my job, I wondered how I was going to feed the family and what I was going to do. I learned that I should just be calm and trust God. When God closes one door, He opens another. In November, God opened another door, so I was able to take care of my family. Even though I didn't get the gold medal, I felt God was smiling upon me. For some reason, even something as small as this, God can use it for purposes I cannot yet see.
Immediately after this I went to my hometown in Darzo, Italy. I left my village twenty years ago. People in my village paid my way back from Barcelona to Italy. My spiritual children organized a reception and I got to talk in front of the people in my hometown. It was the first time in my life that I could stand in front of the people in my village and tell my story. I testified about True Parents. I talked about how God helped me in this endeavor. It is just amazing how God used a situation like this.
My experiences in Spain put me in touch with many people. All my team members are keeping in touch with each other. I testified to some of them and I plan to continue to do so to others. When people come to me and ask about my way of life and my motivation for what I do, I will tell them about True Parents.
In 1996, I would like to train an Olympic team, both physically and spiritually. That's my greatest hope-to do it either with an American team or an Italian team. Whatever God wants me to do at that particular time I will do.
Pier Angelo joined the church in 1972 in his native Italy and came to the United States in 1973. A graphic artist for twenty years, Pier Angelo created the design for Today's World when it began publication in 1980. He has been working as an art director in Washington, D.C. He and his American wife, Mary, were blessed in 1982 at Madison Square Garden and have four children.