***Update Paralysed athlete could walk after all
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Dutchwoman now says she was previously able to stand prior to ‘miracle recovery’, Rabobank to assess Van der Vorst situation after new twist to comeback story
The Rabobank cycling team has said that it will sit down with Monique Van der Vorst and work out her future plans after a peculiar twist in the story which captivated the attention of the media and public in the Netherlands and further afield.
The 27 year old former Paralympic world championship silver medalist made what was seen as a dramatic recovery from paralysis in July 2010 when she began walking once again, over a decade after she began using a wheelchair. This gained considerable press coverage and mystified medical professionals.
However, according to an article printed in the Dutch De Pers publication, Van der Vorst has now admitted to being able to stand and walk at limited moments during the years that she had previously implied that she had no movement.
The newspaper spoke to her after it said that many witnesses had contacted them contradicting her story. One said that they saw her standing after putting her wheelchair in the car, following a presentation to her in November 2009; it claims that others saw her walk after races.
She had previously said that a spinal injury was responsible for the paralysis of one leg, but now says there was a different cause. De Pers’ reporter Thijs Zonneveld (himself a former professional bicycle racer, and the initiator of the Dutch mountain) asked Van der Vorst what the deal was:
I have only realised myself since yesterday what is going on, when I started digging through my personal archive. [...]
Nobody understood me. Doctors diagnosed me with incomplete paraplegia, without explaining what they meant. Others treated me like I was crazy. I really did have some sort of paralysis. Not because of problems in my spine, but because of the way my brain controlled my body. My current physician compares it to a car. My engine wasn’t broken, but I had forgotten how to drive. Sometimes the paralysis would be gone, and then I could stand for a while, or walk, but never for long. I did not lie, but I never found the right words.
The professional racer attributes her mentally induced paralysis to a trauma caused by a difficult birth and the accidents she was in.
She said there are a number of reasons why the issue could have occurred, including a difficult birth, ending up in a wheelchair as a teenager and a near-death experience, presumably referring to the accident with the car which left her in a coma in 2008.
Zonneveld concludes:
“Maybe we the press should have asked better questions. Van der Vorst gave hundreds of interviews, but nobody managed to unearth the truth. That was her fault, but also our own. We turned her story into a fairy tale. But Monique van der Vorst is no miracle. She is a human being with her own story that is perhaps more complex than we all wanted to believe.”
http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/11...ack-story.aspx http://www.24oranges.nl/2012/03/30/p...walk-after-all http://www.deondernemer.nl/sport/640...ezegd-heb.html
She didn't withdraw the claim that a
spinal injury was responsible for the paralysis, nor pointed out that she was able to STAND and to WALK even before the "miracle healing" until now: she now claims that
she din't lie, but she admits that
she didn't say the truth, hard to see any difference between the two, for me.
International press makes this painfully clear:
Van der Vorsts miracle healing was a hoax (Die Welt)
Monique van der Vorst admits hoax (Aargauer Zeitung)
Paralympics / General: Van der Vorst, "miracle healing" was a hoax (FOCUS online)
Monique van der Vorsts miracle cure turns out to be hoax (T-Online)
Miracle cure was fraud (Yahoo! Eurosport)
The true story of Monique, "imaginary invalid" (Corriere della sera)