“At birth, they pulled me with vacuum and damaged the nerve in my knee. I did not have any diagnosis until I was three years old, and doctors in BiH told me that the diagnosis can be established when I become twelve. My parents did not want us to wait that long and they learned that the analysis can be made in London. A mild form of cerebral paralysis was diagnosed”, said Ilma.
Her parents played a key role in her success and did not give up from doing a number of exercises together with her.
“My parents brought me to this success, that is, my walk is not noticeable that much as it was before. My parents and friends have never hide the problem and I did not have any complexes, I felt like all other children”, adds Ilma.
Despite the many discouraging comments, her father brought her to Mountain Igman and taught her to ski. Later on, when Ilma was 14 years old, professor Senad Turkovic taught her to become a ski Paralympic athlete. She did not wait for long to get medals. Four years later she won the bronze medal in Austria, and then silver in Switzerland.
“This year I achieved the norm and started to ski in the Europa Cup. In Langraf, I won the fourth place, and this year I achieved a great result in Switzerland and Austria. I participated in the World Championships in Canada, but without results. However, for me, the most important was the fact that I participated in Paralympic games in Sochi, although I did not achieve the result. That is more important than medals, “said Ilma.
Several days later, she will participate in World Cup in Italy, where he hopes she will be successful, and her greatest wish is to achieve a good result at the next Paralympic Games. She hopes that, as before, she will have the help of the Paralympic Committee of BiH and Paralympic Committees of Serbia and Croatia with whom she trained. Moreover, she counts on the help of sponsors as well, and admits that, despite the desire and persistence, without the support, everything would be much harder.
“Earlier, a model Lindsey Vonn was my idol, however, now that I understand things a lot better, my biggest role model is professor Senad Turkovic and my parents who never gave up on me. This is my recommendation to others who want to achieve something in life, do not give up because usually, the last key opens the door, ” concludes Ilma.
Besides skiing, her first love was information technology, that is why she enrolled at the Faculty of Information Technologies in Mostar. Thanks to the attentive professors, she manages to reconcile university duties with skiing and hopes it will continue because she wants skiing to be popular and recognized sport in BiH.
(Source: klix)
