This famed mountain biker was on top of his game when a crash nearly left him paralyzed. Now, Paul Basagoitia is looking to use his journey to recovery to help others with spinal cord injuries.
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00:00I was told I was never going to walk again.
00:25The first year I had really not too much movement from the waist down and it was, here I am
00:31living my worst nightmare.
00:32It was the biggest challenges I've ever had in my life.
00:36I got to be able to move my right leg for the first time.
00:42I knew there was some sort of hope to be able to maybe regain some movement sensation and
00:48maybe to be able to walk again and to pedal a bike once again that I used to love doing.
00:55Believe it or not, I enjoy riding bikes more now today than I ever have before.
01:03It's kind of weird because when you think about the situation, the bike causes this
01:06to happen to me, but at the same time, the bike brings so much joy to me.
01:10I used to hate pedaling.
01:12All I ever wanted to do was go downhill, right?
01:15Now I'm like, I want to go up the steepest hill.
01:17I want to feel my legs burning because every time I feel my legs burning and getting sore,
01:22I'm like, yes, my legs are working, this is amazing.
01:25You take that for granted and to get that back is a huge blessing.
01:37The word cure in spinal cord injury is a very touchy subject and I really want to bring
01:40that back to everyone's attention and maybe one day we can find that cure.
01:47When we see this film, maybe a young kid that's graduating from college, maybe he wants to
01:52go and be a stem cell scientist and find that cure for spinal cord injury because right
01:59now there's no funding whatsoever when it comes to spinal cord injuries and there's
02:02not too many people spending much time backing it up other than Wings for Life, so hopefully
02:07that changes in the future.