Starting the year 2014 with my preparations for the 2016 games in Rio I just want to share with you how important my sponsors are and how grateful I am to have their support over the past few years and still have. I am pretty proud of how far I have come and I couldn’t be more thankful to be where I am today.
My main sponsor Rheinpower believed in me and supported me from the very first minute and took me into their Team Rheinpower together with Olympic Track and field Champion Robert Harting, soccer stars Ivo Grlic and Inka Grings and winter sports athletes Tino Edelmann, Fanny Chmelar and Laura Dahlmeier. Being a Paralympic athlete sponsored by a big company spreads awareness of our sports in society, commerce, and industry.
Without their help I wouldn’t be the athlete I am today and this is why:
Looking at an athlete you can see he is traveling the world, meeting interesting people and you see them competing for a few seconds. Most of the people don’t realize the time, money and emotional energy goes into this journey, especially being an athlete with 2 artificial legs. One pair of running legs is equivalent to the price of a brand new luxury car and in the last 3 years, I had probably 3 sets of legs, exchanging several broken parts of them. I can’t count the hours I spend in my leg shop fixing issues on my legs and I can’t count how many hours I spend in the car on my way there. So even more important was the car I got from Rheinpower to easily arrive at all my appointments which were spread over Germany.
On top of the crazy amount of time and money, I put a lot of blood sweat into each day of training to get the best athlete I can be.
Keeping this in mind you can imagine how much I just love my sport and I really do and I absolutely enjoy doing what I do.
Anyway, I thought it’s time to say thank you Dambeck prosthesis for all their hard work, Rheinpower for believing in me and supporting me on my journey since the beginning and Swiss life select for helping me to afford my endless consumption of knees. Without you, I wouldn’t be that athlete that I am today.
Thank you so so much!