How sled dog racing pulled paralyzed musher Taina Teräs out of her depression
She is back home in Sweden after being two and a half months on the road for her sport. Taina Teräs is an impressive appearance in sled dog racing. While other mushers can look over their dogs standing on skis like generals behind their sled and complete the trail, Teräs, once one of the Scandinavian top athletes in the sport, does it sitting in her sled. Steering, braking, navigating with her voice and with her hands, she has a different field of vision and a different technique than her colleagues.
The 68-year-old Finnish woman, living in Sweden, is disabled, paralyzed from the waist down. Teräs sits in a wheelchair and competes in a specially built sled. All her opponents are not disabled. “My goal is to form a Scandinavian team with disabled racers and give them the opportunity to race. And to become world champion!”
It illustrates Teräs’ drive and willpower. She is 68 years old, she calls her dogs and racing a lifestyle, her way of life. Since she started with seven huskies in the early 1980s, after which she ran hounds and mixed breeds, that has been the way she lives her life: being outdoors, in nature, with love and attention for her dogs and racing. She was part of the Swedish national team. Until she had a serious accident during a race in the late 1990s. She fell from her sled, landed badly and became paralyzed. She still had feeling in the upper part of her body and she could still move her hands, the rest was numb.
Gone was the passion, gone was sled dog racing. All vanished after one terrible accident. A life that falls apart. At least, that’s what Teräs thought for a long time. “A long, very difficult period began in my life. I became really depressed and no longer found life interesting, because what could I do?” says Teräs. The mushers community could no longer tolerate it and decided on a nice gesture. Also one with a clear message. “I was given a puppy and told to stop feeling sorry for myself and my life. “Just take care of this puppy and get back on track,” I was told.”
Most heartbreaking moment
It helped. Teräs got to work. That summer she went outside more and more to physically train in her wheelchair and that winter she decided to really pick up her sporting and outside life again. “I borrowed a sit ski from an organization that provides equipment for disabled athletes and started doing what I loved most before the accident: going out with my dogs in the snow.” She doesn’t remember her first competition, but that first time outside behind her dogs in a first cautious training is on top of her mind. “That was the most heartbreaking moment in my life. I was back in the snow, back where I belong. I had a purpose in life again.”
Team
Teräs lives in the north of Sweden, but has to go to Norway and other parts of Scandinavia to practice her sport. “There are no good trails nearby for training. And in Sweden there are few disabled racers like me. There are some more in Norway, I want to help them. It would be great to create a team of disabled racers.” Because she has been in sled dog racing all her life, she knows how to race. It’s in her body, she speaks the idiom of the sport. “It’s difficult to explain, but I know what actions I have to do, yes. Since I became disabled, I did had to become stronger in my hands. A musher always rides with me during training, but not during competitions. Than I’m on my own. That’s why I don’t want to ride with more than four dogs, because it could become more dangerous for me, for example if a dog is distracted and walks in the other direction.”
Interesting is if the dogs know that there is a disabled person behind them in a sled? “I often train with them, so they should feel that something is different. They do know that I’m in a wheelchair and that I’m in a sled during races,” says Teräs. “At the same time, of course, they don’t care. They just want to run!” The 68-year-old musher is hopeful that eventually more attention will be paid to disabled racers and that competitions will also be organized in her category.
Inclusion of the disabled racers in the sled dog sport is a matter of the long haul. “It will take some time before it happens. There is only one central sports committee in Scandinavia, which facilitates and organizes everything, so it will take some time, but we’ll get there.” And when the time comes, Teräs is ready with her dogs to make a dream come true. “Becoming world champion again, haha. Why not? I now compete with the able-bodied athletes and I don’t come last! That’s good, right?!”