Zahra Gor­don

"Sweat is noth­ing com­pared to your tears," said triple-am­putee ath­lete Ra­jesh Dur­bal dur­ing an in­ter­view at Pi­ar­co Air­port up­on his ar­rival in Trinidad yes­ter­day. Dur­bal, 35, of­fered these words of in­spi­ra­tion to chil­dren want­i­ng to fol­low in his foot­steps.

In 2010, Dur­bal, whose par­ents are Trinida­di­an, his­tor­i­cal­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Iron Man World Triathlon Cham­pi­onships in Hawaii. Dur­bal is in T&T on a six-day No Ex­cus­es tour host­ed by Ask Lead­er­ship Ltd. His sched­uled ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Rain­bow Cup Triathlon in To­ba­go on May 26 and a mo­ti­va­tion­al talk at the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre in Wood­brook.

Dur­bal hopes to share mes­sages of in­spi­ra­tion and con­tribute to sig­nif­i­cant change in the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty and coun­try gen­er­al­ly. "The whole idea is to come in­to the coun­try and make sys­tem­at­ic and im­pact­ful change that will rec­i­p­ro­cate and fil­ter down for gen­er­a­tions to come," he said yes­ter­day.

Dur­bal said he plans on reach­ing out to var­i­ous sec­tions of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing those who are in­car­cer­at­ed in prison. Dur­bal lost both legs and the low­er part of his right arm while still a tod­dler be­cause of a con­gen­i­tal de­for­mi­ty. He has been able to com­pete ath­let­i­cal­ly through the use of pros­thet­ic limbs.

As part of his mes­sage of change, Dur­bal is ad­vo­cat­ing for cost-ef­fec­tive pros­thet­ic equip­ment be­com­ing more avail­able in the Caribbean re­gion. He said pro­ceeds from the Rain­bow Cup will go to­wards clin­ics for dis­abled chil­dren and spe­cif­ic re­search on pros­thet­ics. On May 29, Dur­bal will host a "free-lap" around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, with dis­abled chil­dren and the gen­er­al pub­lic.