Abel Vázquez, a judo champion aiming to achieve Paralympic gold

Sevilian Abel Vázquez feels like this is his last chance. This judoka has been in two Paralympic games, is a nine-time champion of Spain in the blind people category and won a silver medal at the 2013 European championships. All the good work done over the last year, has enabled him to compete in the Rio Paralympics. This was a hard year for him as whilst he was working towards this competition, he was studying to become a Physical Education teacher at the same time, something that he finally achieved. Abel feels that this is his last big opportunity to win the medal that seemed so close in London 2012. That was one of the hardest moments of his sports career, along with the knee surgery he had to go through following Beijing 2008, when he was barely 16 years old, and that kept him away from judo for a year. Abel was born with ocular albinism, a condition that reduces his visual acuity by 80%. He began to practise judo at the age of six to be just like the other boys in the neighbourhood. Now he aims to teach the same values he learnt, to the children of that same neighbourhood, impressing them with an Olympic medal the first day of class if possible.