Nico Vergeylen - practice, fight and win

He has accomplished what other people dream throughout their lives. As thousands of spectators acclaimed the march of their nations in Beijing this summer, Nico Vergeylen carried the flag of his country. The Beligum flag – and it was the march of the Paralympics.

Four years ago, at the Paralympics in Athens, he celebrated the biggest success of his athletic career: The gold medal with the team what aroused big hope for the Games in Beijing. But the dreams lost ground in the quarter finals. „It was a big disappointment“ he says. Nico Vergeylen learned to deal with throwbacks. In the last weeks he made rapid ascend in his performance.

At the Tango-Cup in Buenos-Aires the 40-year-old, who is sponsored by andro for several years, won 3 gold medals in one tournament for the first time. In his class 8, in the open class and in the team competition where he started with the German Jan Brinkmann. Athletes who can not stand participate in the classes1 to 5. Nico Vergeylen, whose knee is stiff and who has not got any function on that side of the body, is categorized into class 8. In the future he eventually will be classified into class 7.

„At every international tournament of disabled athletes a public health officer is present in order to classify and prove the persons“ Nico says. After his triumph in Buenos Aires another success followed in Venezuela. The gold medal in the singles tournament (class 8), the silver medal with the team and the bronze medal in the open class gained him so many points that can almost be assured of the fact that his next goal is already achieved: The European Championships in Italy 2009.

Nico invested much for this aim because only three of the eight tournaments he started at are financially sponsored by the federation. Of course andro will support Nico Vergeylen at the European Championships. Since a botched surgery took the natural movement-ability of his leg -when he was 5 years old- the Belgium has passed a long and difficult path. He started playing table-tennis at the age of thirteen. „A long time I have only been occupying myself on the computer. I wanted to do something back then.“ he explains. His leg, of course, turned out to be a big handicap in the field of table-tennis, too. Due to the fact that he cannot bend his knee he is not able to play a forehand topspin. Therefore he strikes back with hard blocks and smashes with the andro LOGO, a short pimple rubber. On the backhand, where he also uses a topsin, he plays an andro ROCKET. To this day he practices four times a week and joins matches twice weekly – also in the fourth Belgium League. „Just to play in the disabled league would be underchallenging, because the niveau in Belgium is too low.“

Nico Vergeylen is very ambitious. He wants to become a better player and is ready to work hard for it. Using andro equipment.