Irmgard Bensusan: From Olympic dreamer to Paralympic star

Watching her train at the Fritz-Jacobi-Sporthalle in Leverkusen, it's easy to mistake Irmgard Bensusan, 28, for an able-bodied athlete. 

She bounds down a practice track like a gazelle at the indoor facility, weighted sled in tow. The rubber surface beneath her feet cracks every time her legs thrust her forward.

Only when one looks at the brace on Bensusan’s right ankle, holding her right foot cocked with the toes pointing back towards the shin, does one recognize that she had suffered severe nerve damage in her right leg.

"I can lift my foot up until there," Bensusan told DW as she lifted her right foot about a centimeter. "And I can move it in, but I can’t take it out.

"Basically, I don’t have anything at the bottom," she continued. "It’s just a part of my body that doesn’t function."

Bensusan, 28, did not always need a leg brace to do bounding drills and sled runs. She was once an aspiring Olympian in South Africa, an up-and-coming star in the 100-meter hurdles and the 200-meter dash. 

But an accident before a hurdles event at the South African Junior Championships in 2009 put her track and field career on a different path. A three-time Paralympic medalist and a holder of two world records, Bensusan, now representing Germany, is aiming for her first Paralympic gold at the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo.

Life-changing accident

Bensusan, then 18, was one of the favorites to win the 100-meter hurdles at the junior event. She had finished second the year before and was going into the race with the fastest qualifying time.

She does not remember when her Olympic dream began, but she always knew that she wanted to compete at the Games. The question in her mind was not whether she would have a professional running career, but rather what she needed to do in order to concentrate on her running career.

That all changed when, while doing warm-up drills, someone walked in front of her, causing her to break concentration. She hit a hurdle with her lead leg, and, as she fell forward, her entire knee went backward.

"At first, I wanted to try and turn around and stand up, but I noticed my foot was hanging there," Bensusan said. "I just looked at my leg and started to scream. I think the whole stadium heard me screaming."

Bensusan was rushed to the hospital for tests. There, doctors touched her foot with a pin. She told them she could not feel anything. An operation revealed that the nerve below her right knee had been damaged, but not completely broken through.

She was told that the nerve could repair itself after six weeks, but if it did not reach the muscle within 18 months, the muscle would start to degenerate. Six months after her accident, a doctor told her she would not be able to run like she used to.

"I was looking at him like: 'No. This can’t be true. You have to be lying. I don’t understand what you’re saying,'" Bensusan recalled.

She said she did not talk to anyone on the drive home from the doctor that day. Once home, she went straight to her room and locked herself in. The next morning, her mother suggested she go see a psychologist for help.

"For me, it was more psychological that I couldn’t chase the dream that I had since… I don’t know when… To go to the Olympics, to do running, to be a professional athlete," Bensusan said. "I think that was the biggest psychological problem than actually having a problem with my foot."

Certification trouble

Because her disability is not as obvious as, say, an amputee running with blades, Bensusan had trouble getting herself back into competitive running.

She received certification at the provincial level in South Africa, but she was unable to get certified on the national level, which barred her from competing in national championships.

Bensusan’s mother, a half-German who was born in Hanover, arranged for her to compete for TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen, a prestigious track and field club near Cologne.

With her degree in accounting at the University of Johannesburg already complete, Bensusan packed her bags for Germany. There, ahead of the 2014 Berlin Grand Prix, she earned classification, ironically from the same woman who declassified her in South Africa.

"I still think about it. If I have to hear I have to go for classification, I start getting the jitters. I really don’t want to go for classification ever again," Bensusan said. "I have been classified after that twice again, both confirmed. But it is such a stressful moment. Your whole life depends on it."

She has now lived in and represented Germany since receiving classification. Among her career achievements are four gold medals and 11 silver medals at major championships. That includes three silver medals, in 100 meters, 200 meters and 400 meters, in the T44 classification at the Rio Paralympics in 2016.

In 2019, Bensusan was named Germany’s para-athlete of the year after she set the T44 world record in 100 meters in May and broke the T44 200-meter world record a month later.

 

At the 2019 IPC World Championships in Dubai, she earned her first world title in the 200-meter dash — though she shouted an expletive at the finish line because she thought she finished second.

"The blades usually overtake me in the last five meters," Bensusan said. "This happens so often. I was so frustrated. Only in the interview (with German broadcaster ZDF) afterwards, they informed me that I won."

Shooting for gold

"Schluffi“ is the name Bensusan gave her partially paralyzed leg. She says her coach, Karl-Heinz Düe, came up with the name because she is sometimes a bit slow.

"I say: 'It’s Schluffi’s fault. It’s not my fault. I’m not being slow, it’s Schluffi'‘" Bensusan chuckles. 

Düe trained Bensusan for three years when she first arrived in Germany, and the two returned to each other earlier this year after a one-year hiatus.

"Irmgard is a confident and meticulous athlete," Düe tells DW. "She is very disciplined and always on time."

A KPMG auditor by day, Bensusan trains daily before going off to work, using a red date book to keep track of her workouts. On the morning of DW's interview, she admits to her coach that she "isn’t the youngest anymore" and that her body "needs time to wake up."

As Bensusan drags the weighted sled behind her, hurdlers in the lane next to her practice their approach over the first hurdle. She confesses that, whether live or on television, hurdles is something she cannot watch.

"Every time I see someone around a hurdle, I have to look away," Bensusan says.

She is not someone who regrets the hand she has been dealt, nor someone who wonders how her Olympic career could have unfolded. She takes pride in her transformation and would not change anything for a moment.

"I am prouder of the three silver medals I won at the Paralympics in Rio than of ones I would have won at any Olympics," Bensusan says. "It shows the hard time I came through, all the fighting, all the crying, all the downfalls and the ups."