Meet the Paralympic Iron Cowboy: ‘A bull broke my jaw, a bus ran me over – and I was hit by lightning’

There is a point, as Fernando Rufino reels off the staggering list of mishaps and injuries that have shaped his life, when you begin to wonder whether you’ve been transported into some kind of alternate dimension.

One of Brazil’s most famous Paralympians, thanks to his efforts in canoeing, Rufino goes by the nickname ‘Iron Cowboy’, which alludes both to his past as a rodeo rider and to the metal plates that reinforce his spinal cord which he injured when, aged 21, he fell out of a moving bus, the wheels crushing his body.

That alone would make for an amazing story. But you haven’t heard the half of it.

There was the time he was trampled by an 800kg bull and dragged along the ground by a galloping horse. There have been car, motorbike and horse riding accidents, too.

“I broke this thumb,” Rufino tells The Athletic. “I severed the top of this finger, a small saw blade fell on my face and went right under my eye. My brother and I used to try to recreate fight scenes from films. On one occasion he hit me with a wooden plank and cut my head open.

“When I was a teenager, a bull broke my jaw. Then the bus ran me over. I drove my motorbike into a tree at 100kmh. I was doing weights at the gym and a metal bar fell on me, breaking my nose. I broke two ribs due to overtraining, I trained for two weeks with a broken leg, thinking it was just a muscle issue….

“Then I was struck by lightning”.

Lightning?

“Yes! On my front doorstep. I felt the energy of it going through me. It threw me up in the air. I landed on the back of my neck, cut my elbow open. I writhed on the floor for about 15 minutes with my muscles all seized up. I could smell burning for three days afterwards.

“I love it when accidents happen to me. It just gives me more stories to tell. I’m a guy from the backcountry, a warrior who wants to win at life, a cowboy who won gold at the Paralympics.”

And today, the reigning Va’a 200m VL2 Paralympic and three-time world champion will take to the water in a bid to defend his title.

Rufino was raised on a traditional farm in Mato Grosso do Sul, central-west Brazil. He and his parents still live there with the horses and bulls, the money Rufino earns from canoeing invested into the property which they run according to his grandparents’ way of life.

Rufino became a rodeo rider because he dreamed of travelling the world. But after his spinal cord injury, he knew that career was over.

With the help of his father, he relearned how to walk on the farm and did nearly all of his years of rehabilitation at home, riding horses and swimming in the reservoir. “Animals are part of my story and who I am,” he says. “They helped me walk again.”

Rufino still wanted to travel the world, though, and sport was a way to do that. A friend found a centre that trained disabled athletes. He tried a few sports and then on August 7, 2012 at 8am — he remembers the date with pinpoint clarity — he tried para canoe.

“I forget about my disability on the water,” he says. “I feel like everyone else. If you saw me paddling next to someone without any disability, they wouldn’t know which one of us was disabled. It’s liberating.”

The 39-year-old missed the 2016 Rio Paralympics because of high blood pressure and hypertrophy in his heart but his technique improved because the training load was lower. When he made his Paralympic debut at Tokyo 2020, delayed by 12 months because of the global pandemic, he made a statement with his tufted silver hair, becoming the first Brazilian to win a gold medal at the Paralympic Games.

Fernando Rufino had his big breakthrough in Tokyo (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)

Cheered on by his family from the farm at home, Rufino will go up against his good friend and compatriot Igor Tofalini, also a former rodeo cowboy, who was his best man at his wedding in 2018. They live, eat and train together at the national canoeing hub in Ilha Comprida, Brazil. Rivals on the water but good friends off it, they share everything.

“If he wins, we’ll have a barbecue to celebrate, and it’ll be the same if I win. But the gold and silver medals will be ours.”

The bald-headed, bushy-bearded Rufino, who has his cowboy hat in his room in the Paralympic village and annoys everyone with the “saddest country music” on race day, is ready mentally and physically for Friday’s heats and Sunday’s finals, should he qualify.

“Without wanting to sound big-headed, I’ve already won everything there is to win in my sport. I believe I can leave here as a double Paralympic champion.”

Rufino says the Los Angeles 2028 Games, when he will be 43 years old, will probably be his last Paralympics but all that matters to him is to be remembered as the “true Iron Cowboy”.

“I’m definitely going to die old. I’ve tried to die young but I’ve never managed it.”

(Top photo: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images))