True grit-Zanardi heads to Paralympics

"Miracle"

"But as I rejoined the circuit, something happened. I lost control of the car, going back into the acceleration lane, and ended up standing still in the middle of the racing lane. The first car went by and was able to avoid me," he added.

"The second didn't."

Italy's Alessandro Zanardi prepares his handcycle during a training session near Padua May 14, 2012. [Photo/Agencies]

Medics were there within seconds of the crash, but Zanardi had lost almost three quarters of his blood by the time a helicopter took him to a hospital in Berlin, some 140 km (90 miles north).

"My heart stopped seven times, I was given the last rites by a priest. If you had to find a word, the closest thing would be 'miracle,'" he said.

"But I don't think it was a miracle. It was a great gift that I was given by these amazing men who saved my life."

If his survival was a miracle, Zanardi was particularly unlucky in the way the crash happened.

"It was a coincidence, but he hit me with one of the strongest and sharpest parts of the racing car, the nose, into probably the most vulnerable part of (my) car, which is right behind the front wheel.

"So basically, he just punched a hole in my car and broke it in two pieces."

Designed prosthetic legs

After the accident, Zanardi undertook an ambitious rehabilitation program with two prosthetic limbs he helped design.

"I always loved to work myself on the machines I was driving. Sometimes the mechanics would let me do a little bit, sometimes they wouldn't, because they wouldn't trust me," he laughs.

"But that attitude helped me a lot with the rehabilitation. When I came out of the Berlin hospital, I could not wait to understand how a pair of prosthetic legs would work and how I could adapt them to my own needs," he said.

When his own young son begged to go swimming, Zanardi designed legs suitable for the pool, covering them with a special open-cell sponge used inside racing car fuel tanks.

"The innocence of a kid who doesn't understand that his dad ... feels embarrassed to go to the swimming pool in a wheelchair.

"So, I wanted to protect myself from feeling embarrassed but I also wanted to make my son happy," Zanardi said, adding that his design has now been used for other disabled patients.

Winning widespread praise for his recovery, he returned to racing only a year and a half after the crash. In 2003, he went back to Lausitz to drive the course he had nearly died trying to complete in 2001.

He continued in the World Touring Car championships until 2009, by which time he had taken up handcycling.

Italy's Alessandro Zanardi prepares his handcycle during a training session near Padua May 14, 2012.[Photo/Agencies]