In the year 2000 Cees Roest’s life changed in just a split second. The farmer’s son from Siegerswoude crashed into a tree and ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Cees must have been conscious throughout but remembers nothing about the accident. He can talk about it because he heard the story from others. There was a slight bend in the road and that must have unsettled him, the car got into a skid and hit the tree. A one car accident. Luckily it was, Cees says. “If someone else had driven me from the road I may never have forgiven him.”
There is another reason why Cees is pleased about this: “a fortnight later a similar accident happened nearby in which a little girl was hit. I’m so glad this didn’t happen to me”.
Cees never despaired. He realised that he had to go from intensive care to a general ward to a revalidation centre before he could go home. I was lucid enough to realise that at once. I knew I had to work harder in order to return home quickly. I never looked at my legs and wondered: why don’t you function anymore? Not one moment. I just have to get on. I can give up and mourn but that’s not nice for me or for the people who surround me.
Of course I have my bad days but one does not need a spinal cord lesion for that…”.
After 3 months of revalidation a thorax photo was taken to see whether the pin in my ver-tebrae was fixating well. During that check up I asked the surgeon who did the operation what possibilities I still had and whether I had to take anything into account.
He did not understand my question and asked what I wanted to know. So I told him that in the past I did judo and whether I could do this again.
The answer was that the pin was fixated in such a way that I could bend my back and that the pin would stay inside because to remove it would be too risky. But as far as judo was concerned: I could do anything but my spinal cord lesion was my handicap; I would not be able to stand anymore.
I remember very well the first time I was back on the tatami at my judo club. There were club championships. When I came in I saw Maria and she started crying at once. Then my teacher Geert Pruis saw me. He stopped the matches at once and told the audience about my car accident and that I would be in my wheelchair for the rest of my life. But if I wanted and if I felt up to it I could always come back on the tatami to take exams or help with championships and maybe even more would be possible. Then there was a standing ovation and I was overwhelmed by my emotions.
Already before his accident Cees had been a very fanatical sportsman and he got the brown belt around his 19th year. Then, because of work and study he had to give judo a lower profile. But he remained the chairman of his judo club Marum, which he became when he was twenty.
After revalidation was completed he went back to the judo tatami, first to loosen his mus-cles from their spasm but soon he was romping with his old buddies he used to do judo with.
He trained ever more fanatically and it were his judo buddies and his teacher Geert Pruis who encouraged him to take his black belt exam in 2003. Because of obtaining his black belt Cees received a lot of attention from the Dutch media and became “hot news”. Never before had someone with a spinal cord lesion achieved a black belt.
Cees cannot come up to the standard of a “valid” judoka because he cannot do the tachi-waza part standing up. That is why he had to do an adjusted exam, which has to be equivalent to the program of a valid judoka.
Beforehand, Cees had declared that he wanted to be judged by the exam committee in a fair way.
“I want a black belt very much, but only because I deserve it, not because I have a spinal cord lesion” was his motto.
At that time I had just written a thesis on “ the possibilities of promotion for people with a restriction”. The former National DAN grade committee wanted me to talk to them about it and compare opinions. It was only logical to invite Cees to talk about his opinion on people with restrictions earning their grades. I have seldom heard somebody talking with so much fire and passion about why people with restrictions should have the right to pass their Dan grades exams.
Because of the honesty and sincerity with which he talked about the work and effort in-volved in order to achieve his 2nd Dan he convinced de national committee, which told him they thought he could achieve a 3rd Dan.
Cees did pioneering work for people with a restriction. It resulted in the fact that he acquired the 2nd Dan in 2007. I did not attend his first exam but the second I followed closely and I was struck by Cees’ power and charisma. Because of a variety of effective tech-niques one tends to forget that Cees performed these techniques sitting or kneeling. His nage-waza especially looked spectacular. Kata-guruma, ippon-seoi-nage and o-goshi left as well as right seem to come effortlessly. A compliment to Cees, but certainly to Geert Pruis and his Uke Marina Harens.
