If you saw the results of Sunday’s 34th Los Angeles Marathon, you would have seen that Josh Cassidy won the wheelchair division by an impressive seven minutes. However, if you had seen the three time Paralympian’s Instagram stories from the day before you’d be even more impressed by the performance.
During a training session Saturday morning, Cassidy’s custom racing chair snapped clean in half at the front causing a nose dive into the pavement. In a video posted to Instagram, the former World Record holder explained how he figured he was going about 25 km/h before the break happened. He thankfully only suffered some minor scrapes to his elbow.
However, with less than 24 hours to race time, Cassidy was without a chair to race in. Thankfully his coach at home was able to retrieve a spare, which is sister picked up and delivered to the Toronto airport. His former college roommate Nick Bester took it the rest of the way, flying with the chair to Los Angeles. By the time Bester arrived and the chair was assembled it was midnight, not leaving much time before the 3:30 am departure to the starting line.
“Got an hour a sleep, so I’m proud of this” Cassidy told the Orange County Register of his 1:31:47 victory.
