Golden Kiwi switches to marathon

Gold-medal winner Dan Buckingham is taking a break from the sport to which he has devoted his adult life, to have a crack at the New York Marathon this Sunday.

Buckingham, 37, whose day job is general manager of television production company Attitude Pictures, was a member of the Wheel Blacks, the New Zealand wheelchair rugby team, when they won gold at the 2004 Athens Paralympics and was later made captain.

Now he is devoting himself to training for the 42km marathon.

“I did a half marathon 10 years ago and didn’t get a chance to get back to it,” Buckingham said.

For Sunday’s event, he will propel himself in a three-wheeled track chair and wear “robust” gloves to protect his hands.

He has been training for about four months, putting in around two hours a day rolling his wheelchair, on four or five days a week — plus weight training.

He expects he will complete the marathon in about 21⁄ hours and said top athletes take about 11⁄ hours — “I’m a weekend warrior next to those guys”.

Buckingham lost his ability to walk in a club rugby accident in 1999 when he was 18 and a first-year student at Otago University. He was left paralysed below the chest and lost some function in his hands.

He recalls a scrappy match with messy scrums. He was a hooker.

“From what I understand, in this one particular scrum the other team engaged before we were set. One of my props stood up to pull out, while the other tried to engage. I should have pulled out but I tried to engage and got caught in between them.

“Something had to give. My 6th and 7th vertebrae ... fractured and dislocated. I fell to the ground immediately. As one of my teammates came to help me up, I was already saying, ‘I can’t feel my legs’.”

He began playing wheelchair rugby while at the Burwood Spinal Unit in Christchurch, finding a different pathway for his life, one that would define it, in the Wheel Blacks, for 16 years.

Now, as a member of the Auckland Council disability advisory panel, he promotes the need to increase the expectations of people with disabilities to live a full life.

Buckingham’s marathon bid is linked to Achilles NZ, which, with support from Cigna, helps people with disabilities participate in mainstream sports events. He is helping to raise money for the CatWalk Spinal Cord Injury Research Trust.

HWatch a video with Dan Buckingham at nzherald.co.nz