BOCCIARDO Francesco

Classification
S5, SB4, SM5 (IPC, 12 Mar 2021)

Type of Impairment
Cerebral Palsy (Athlete, 09 Sep 2019; Facebook profile, 23 Mar 2019)

Origin of Impairment
Congenital (Athlete, 09 Sep 2019)

Impairment Details
He has spastic distal tetraplegia, which affects the movement in his legs. (Athlete, 09 Sep 2019; quotidiano.net, 08 Mar 2018; finp.it, 2012)

General
WORKAHOLIC
He has described himself as a workaholic, and is looking forward to applying the dedication he has cultivated in sport to other areas of life once his swimming career is over. "Many people think that a swimmer is just a swimmer, as if we could not be anything else. It's not like that. I'm a swimmer but I'm also a worker, a boyfriend, a son, a dreamer, a friend, perhaps one day also a father and many other things. Swimming has certainly been and will always be a fundamental and very important part of my life, but I also know that one day I will hang my swimsuit up and continue on with life. I would define myself as a workaholic who tries to do everything, and unfortunately often I only have time to do half of it." (associazionemicrolab.it, 13 Dec 2019)

ATTITUDE
In 2019 he said his life had been a journey of self-acceptance since age three. "I have overcome many difficulties, first of all that of accepting my impairment. I think I realised I was different from other children when I was three and saw my image reflected in the glass while I was walking. All the other difficulties in life were nothing compared to that. It was not easy. Adolescence was complicated, often I was seen, and am still seen, as an alien. In my opinion, if there are the right institutions and structures, a disability should not affect a person in a negative way. It is up to us to decide whether disability ought to be a disabling force. Assuming that there are no structural barriers in place, a person must seek within himself the motivation to say, 'I can lead a happy life even with a disability'." (zai.net, 27 Feb 2017; associazionemicrolab.it, 13 Dec 2019)