Oscar “Oz” Sanchez, who is of Mexican descent, was born on December 2, 1975, in Los Angeles. By the time he graduated from high school, Sanchez had become heavily involved in gangs and drugs in the inner-city neighborhood where he and his family lived. He was able to turn his life around for the better, though, after joining the U.S. Marine Corps in 1996. “The Marine Corps saved my life in more ways than one,” Sanchez asserted in a 2008 interview with the Las Vegas Sun. “The Marines brought out the many strengths I had in me and flushed out the many weaknesses.”
After serving in the Marines for nearly six years, Sanchez was set to join the U.S. Navy for training as a Navy SEAL. Tragedy struck in July 2001, however, just before that transfer from one military branch to another was supposed to take place. Sanchez was riding his motorcycle near Morley Field Sports Complex in San Diego when someone driving a car made an illegal turn in front of him. Consequently, Sanchez’s motorcycle crashed and he flipped over an embankment and then into a ditch with rocks in it. This hit-and-run accident resulted in a spinal cord injury that has left him partially paralyzed and unable to walk.
Ultimately, after struggling with a severe case of post-injury depression, Sanchez found new strength and motivation to live the largest, most productive life possible. In 2006, for example, he graduated from San Diego State University with a B.S. in business management. (Sanchez has since also earned an M.S. in marriage and family therapy from that university.) Sanchez, whose previous athletic pursuits had included playing high school football and riding motor bikes, channeled his vast wealth of determination into competitive handcycling as well.
Handcycling was first developed during the 1980s as an alternate type of human-powered transportation. “It’s for people who have no or limited use of their legs, people who have poort balance, or anyone who just wants to try a different sport,” explained Heather Plucinski of Challenge Alaska, a non-profit association focused on improving the quality of life for people with disabilities. Plucinski also noted, “It opens up a lot of trails and lot of countryside, a lot of fresh air, and a lot of places you can travel.”
For Sanchez, handcycling has given him unfettered access to a whole new set of welcome challenges as a formidable athlete at high levels of completion across the globe. This was very much in evidence at the 2011 Parapan American Games in the city of Guadalajara in his ancestral homeland of Mexico. Sanchez won gold medals at that multi-sport event for both a mixed time trial and a men’s road race.
Sanchez has also participated in the Summer Paralympic Games over the years. At the 2008 games in Beijing, he earned a gold medal in a time trial and a bronze medal in a men’s road race. At the Paralympic Games four years later in London, Sanchez won a gold medal for the mixed team relay and a bronze medal for a men’s road time trial. At the 2016 Summer Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, he was awarded a silver medal for the mixed team relay and a bronze medal for a men’s road time trial.
In a 2021 interview with CNN, Sanchez discussed what his career as a handcyclist has meant to him. He said, “I felt so utterly broken and worthless because of my interpretation and perception of my being an individual with a disability who can’t walk, those medals meant I was still a successful person and therefore I was worthy because of those medals.” Sanchez further stated, “But now, I no longer contend with that depression and those ways of thinking. My body might be broken per se, but I am not broken. And so now, the medals are more of a testament to the person I’ve become.”
Photo Credit: Clarke Henry (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)
For more information on Oz Sanchez, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_Sanchez and https://www.teamusa.com/profiles/oz-sanchez
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