Pages: Rudy
By John Pages
Match point

THE three-kilometer strait between the islands of Panay and Guimaras is murky. The sea is rough and angry, swarming with big, black, slimy jellyfish.

But Rudy Fernandez – the namesake of the actor – is undaunted. He plunges in. After one hour and 28 minutes of plowing the waters, he touches ground.

It’s July 1995 – three months later – and Rudy attempts the even more unthinkable: a 32-kilometer swim from Guimaras to Bacolod City. Only this time, the big, the black, slimy are sharks. Four hours pass, he’s midway, when out of nowhere – accompanied by patrolmen on board two pump boats – an alarm sounds.

A sea serpent, locally known as waluwalo, is circling Rudy, teasing him, threatening to attack. He treads, the men ready to fire, but the sea creature relents and disappears. Exactly eight hours and 43 minutes later, Rudy lands in the City of Smiles. Smiling.

Beyond belief?

Well, here’s more: Rudy Fernandez is one-legged.

IN PERSON. I’m in Iloilo City the Monday after Holy Week, snacking on bihon at an eatery called Tony’s.

Across me is Rudy. He is 56-years-old, dark-skinned, sporting a mustache and a pair of deep-set light brown eyes. He’s put on a Timex Ironman watch, a World Cup France ’98 cap, and a pair of black Adidas rubbers: one for the left flesh-and-blood leg, the other for the mechanical hydraulic right leg. “I’m half-human, half-machine,” he jokes.

He pulls out a gold medal from an envelope. “I was the lone one-legged competitor at the Subic International Triathlon,” he says, beaming. “And beat several two-legged competitors my age.” The gold is glittering and proud. But not Rudy. His voice is sincere, with no trace of bragging.

For years – since Al Mendoza’s columns of him in The Inquirer, to my talks with Cebu’s running dean (and Rudy’s manager) Raffy Uytiepo – I longed to meet face to face with RP’s No.1 one-legged triathlete.

But there stood a time when Rudy was RP’s No.1 two-legged athlete.

In September 1972, at the Pesta Sukan Track and Field Championships in Singapore – today’s SEA Games – Rudy was a strapping 24-year-old, at the peak of his career, a prized champion. Twice he sprinted, twice a medal: a silver and a bronze. In the years that follow, Rudy is peerless at the oval.

Until tragedy struck that fateful day in 1978, when Rudy enters Iloilo’s Alegro Theater and a grenade is tossed.

BOOM! Just like that, Rudy’s dreams – with his right leg – are blown to pieces. “I wanted to end it all,” he sighs. “My legs were everything.”

His legs, true enough, were his everything. His passport to the Games. His road to stardom. His ticket to earn a living.

Born to a poor family with 10 other siblings in Ajuy – 100km north of Iloilo – he spent sleepless nights for years at the Good Shepherd’s Orphanage.

I ask how he coped.

“My only way out of poverty,” he admits, “was sports.”

After that nightmarish blast, first in wheelchair, then in crutches, it took years for Rudy to lift himself out of the doldrums. Until he read about Terry Fox. “He was an athlete-turned-amputee who ran across Canada, raised $24 million for charity and inspired millions,” he says. “I knew I could do it, so I made it my mission.”

Soon after, sweat started trickling down Rudy’s face; his left leg turned iron-hard muscular. He put on an artificial wooden right leg and ran for hours on end.

“To lose a leg is no reason to lose hope,” he says.

CHALLENGE. It is August 1987 and for five days straight, Rudy runs the 105km from the town of Sara to Iloilo City. Two months later, from southern to northern Iloilo, another 150km. The next month, from Victorias, Negros Occidental to Bacolod City – 38km.

A total 14 excruciating feats Rudy has finished to date. All for personal glory? To land in the January ‘96 Reader’s Digest as one of their “Heroes for Today,” as he did? To grace the poster of Hong Kong’s Standard Chartered race, which he’s joined since ’99?

“No. My goal is to inspire,” he says. “Especially the less fortunate.” For every single feat Rudy tackles, a beneficiary is aided; like the Red Cross (“To repay them for the blood transfusion I got during the blast”) or the Iloilo-based families of the slain soldiers in Mindanao (who got over P200,000).

“The greatest achievements,” he says, “are those that benefit others.”

By the year 2000, Rudy is a certified hero – in Iloilo, in athletic circles, among his fellow handicapped.

Then disaster bites back. While training on a bike one day, an L300 rams Rudy head-on. He flies through the van’s windshield, undergoes a major operation.

But one month after, still bruised and aching, what does the man do? He fastens his headgear, spins those pedals, takes the road, and braves the sun.

“The mind commands the body,” he quips. To top it all, eight months later – all of 246km in 13 hours – he bikes the whole Panay.

For with Rudy, two legs or one leg, all it takes is one brave heart.

(e-mail: john@playhouse. edu.ph)