How the steel was forged: 6 athletes with challenging careers and strong character

Not all athletes’ careers are made up of accomplishments. There are setbacks, wild injustices, and sudden circumstances that prevent them from achieving their best results. But for those who are truly in love with the business, the obstacles become only a stage on the way to victories. Together with Rosneft, we tell the stories of athletes with strong character. One day fate threw them a hard test, but now the names of these people are familiar to fans from all over the world.

Eric Abidal

Sport: soccer.

In the season-2009/2010 Eric was the main left-back of Barcelona and in the upcoming match with Atletico Madrid he was supposed to perform well for his team. But the Frenchman was hit by swine flu. Abidal recovered quickly enough and returned to action in the same season. However, in 2011 he was diagnosed with a terrible diagnosis – liver cancer.

Many thought that the disease will put an end to the career of the footballer. But he was back on the field again, and just a month and a half after surgery to remove the tumor. In the 90th minute of the match with Real Madrid, the coach introduced Eric into the game. The stands rose, the entire stadium met the athlete with loud applause. Soon Abidal played in the victorious for the Catalans final of the Champions League and was the first to lift the coveted trophy over his head.

Six months later, Eric was waiting for a serious operation for liver transplantation. About that time it is hard for the footballer to remember: “It’s a pain that I remembered for life. But even after a hard and long recovery period, he was finally able to resume training with Barça, and after that he was a free agent until he finished his career in 2014.

Magic Johnson

Sport: basketball.

November 1991 was a time that rocked the NBA and America as a whole. At a press conference on Nov. 7, one of the world’s most ambitious basketball players announced that he was sick with HIV and was ending his career. Magic was diagnosed with the virus during a routine checkup before the start of the season. “When he walked in, he had a strange expression on his face. I thought someone had died,” is the memory that Cookie, Irvin’s wife, has of that fateful day. Despite her husband’s diagnosis, she and their unborn child turned out to be completely healthy.

The basketball player did not put his hands down, on the contrary, he became an open fighter against the disease. He created a special Magic Johnson Foundation, engaged in charity work, was a member of the National Commission on AIDS, and later was appointed UN Ambassador of Peace. Former U.S. President George W. Bush even spoke about Irwin:

To me Magic is a hero, a hero for everyone who loves sports.

Still, Johnson couldn’t live without basketball. Although some players were against his return, thanks to the fans’ choice, Irving was in the starting five of the NBA All-Star Game and brought the team a victory. And in the summer of 1992, he received a call-up to the national team to participate in the Olympic Games. This team was later referred to as a real “Dream Team”. It also, by the way, took the gold. Every time a basketball player appeared on the court, the audience met him with applause.

Ten years later, a miracle happened. During another medical check, doctors found no traces of HIV infection in Magic’s blood. He was able to overcome not only a lot of prejudices about the virus, but also the first in the world to defeat it.

Lionel Messi

Sports: soccer.

When you look at Messi now, it’s hard to believe that he once had serious obstacles on his way to his goal. As a child, the Argentine easily scored 10-12 goals per match, playing for Newells Old Boys, and as a reward received a chocolate cookie. But at the age of nine, Lionel was diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency – a fairly rare disease. All peers grew, and this brilliant boy remained 127 centimeters tall. “I was the smallest on the pitch, the smallest at school, the smallest in the yard,” Messi said. In the future, this could block his path to any top club.

Growth hormone injections are usually prescribed for such a diagnosis. Young Lionel was forced to take injections in his leg every day for two and a half years. In the third year of treatment, the crisis in Argentina became so tangible that the course in his native country had to stop and urgently look for another way out. After all, if the footballer finally stopped taking the hormone, he would be significantly lower.

Fortunately, Messi was helped by entrepreneurs from Buenos Aires, they also introduced the boy to representatives of Barcelona, and most importantly – with Josep Maria Minghella. He discerned in Lionel talent and a wild desire for better results.

It seemed that Leo came to us from an incredible planet where exceptional people are born.

Mario Lemieux

Sports: hockey.

By 1993, Mario was considered the leader of the Pittsburgh Penguins and one of the brightest stars in the NHL. In his collection as many as two Stanley Cups. His rosy career was ruined by the sudden discovery of a lump under the skin on his neck – Lemieux was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s hard to imagine what a shock it was – and that’s after back surgery and a severe infection … The blood disease was accompanied by such unbearable pain in the spine that sometimes after matches Mario sat for a long time in the equipment and could not change clothes on his own.

An aggressive course of therapy allowed Lemieux to return to the ice two months later. At the same time, the Penguins won 17 wins in a row, and the forward himself won the title of top scorer of the season. But the problems did not recede. In the season-1993/1994 had to remove the second herniated disc in the spine, and after dealing with anemia, missing the season-1994/1995. Few believed that Super Mario would ever be able to resume his career.

But he did the impossible: in 1995 he put his skates back on with the idea of playing 60 games for the championship. Who knew that this genius would play 10 more games than planned, score 161 points, win an Olympic gold medal and become a co-owner of his own club at the end of his career. Lemieux truly believed that the most important thing in life was to stay positive.

Natasha Kovacevic

Sports: basketball.

Natasha was a star of Serbian basketball: she grew up in a sporty family, played for Partizan, Vojdavac and Crvena Zvezda, and played three times for the national under-16 team. In 2013, the girl was interested in a foreign club – Hungarian Gyor, with which she went on a fateful trip to a friendly match. It never took place. The bus with players, coaches and managers of Gyor got into a terrible car accident. Both legs of the 19-year-old basketball player were badly damaged, one of them had to be amputated below the knee.

A week after the operation Natasha returned to her homeland, where she began a long process of recovery. And the story of Kovacevic’s accident spread across different countries. Medics from France volunteered to help her, and they also developed a unique prosthesis. All this would have cost the Serbian’s family a lot of money, if not for the basketball world, which did not leave Natasha in trouble.

Thanks to her incredible efforts and two years of rehabilitation, she was able to get back on her feet and continued to play basketball at the professional level on a par with other players. Kovacevic signed a contract with Crvena Zvezda and won the Serbian Cup in 2015. True, immediately after the final, the girl announced the end of her career. But stayed with the Belgrade club for one more season in the role of director, and then decided to devote her time to publishing her autobiography “Steps” and the documentary “Jump”.

Francis Ngannou

Sport: MMA.

What poverty is, Francis knows firsthand. The MMA star was born in the Cameroonian village of Batie and already at the age of 12 worked at a sand quarry. There wasn’t enough money to even eat, let alone get an education. “You can’t understand what it’s like when you wake up half your life in the morning and your only dream is to eat today,” Ngannou once said. And yet it was in his homeland that he became acquainted with boxing.

Gradually, Francis was able to save up for a ticket to Paris, and he flew to France at the age of 26. The man wanted to become a professional fighter so much that in a foreign country he cut vegetables for food, often slept on the street, but continued to do what he loved. The African was sponsored by an organization that helps the poor, and one of its employees brought him to an MMA coach. That’s when Ngannou’s career growth began: first he tried himself in mixed martial arts, and later he climbed to the top of the UFC rankings, captivating the audience and judges with powerful knockouts.

Fortitude and willpower of these athletes can definitely be envied. After all, in order to achieve high achievements in sports, one must be ready to constantly work on oneself, to overcome obstacles, to be uncompromising and to search for the energy of inner strength. Thus, Rosneft, through many years of experience and striving for an ideal product, has developed Pulsar fuel, which releases the reserve of the engine’s internal force energy and contributes to the improvement of car dynamics through effective cleaning of fuel cells. It ensures stable and reliable operation of the fuel system of all types of gasoline engines.

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