Although he lost both of his feet and nine fingers at the Yukon Arctic Ultra race in Canada, Roberto Zanda remained optimistic in spite of what happened. The 61-year-old racer, known as "Il Massiccione" or "The Tough One" in English, proved true to his name.
After six months, Zanda recalled the time when the ordeal happened in February. "Although doctors tried everything to save them, I knew from day one that I would lose my limbs," he said, per the South China Morning Post.
The sportsman went back to the time when he entered the operating room with an empty mind. Although the horror of losing his limbs lingered on his mind, he already accepted his fate. He was even wholeheartedly thankful for the greatest gift he had received at the time -- his life.
The Montane Yukon Arctic Ultra is known as the "world's toughest and coldest ultra race." The participants had to endure minus 40 degrees Celsius running 482km or about 300-mile trail for one week.
Zanda started his preparation and flew to Canada on January 28. He even placed his treadmill inside his friend's "industrial walk-in freezer," but it was nothing compared to the cold he experienced in Yukon.
He braved crossing frozen rivers and running up and down mountain steeps and "fir tree-lined dogsled tracks" amid Yukon's coldest temperature at the time, which was negative 50 degree Celsius, per National Post.
On the race's sixth day, there were only three participants left on the course. One of them was Zanda. Other partakers decided to give up because of the race's brutal conditions. A lot of them suffered from frostbite or hypothermia while others experienced both.
Zanda tried to open his SPOT tracker so that the event organizers could find his location. But he was so cold he could not feel his fingers, let alone use it to activate the device. At around 6 p.m. on February 6, he lost his trail and left alone while the temperature continued falling.
From here, Zanda made his most dangerous decision; he abandoned his sled, which contained all the supplies he needed. He then sat down and leaned upon a tree.
"My feet were warm ... I decided to take off my shoes," he said. He also saw a lot of people around him and asked for their help. He even offered them €50 to call an ambulance, but Zanda was alone. The people he saw were the result of his hallucination caused by severe hypothermia. He walked barefoot for 14 hours at negative 40 degree Celsius.
Zanda fell in and out of consciousness. He even tried to talk to the shadows, which were the trees in the forest and asked God to save him. "You can take my hands and feet, but please don't take my life," he pleaded.
When the race volunteers found him the next day, he was half dead. His hands and feet were black from the cold and suffered fourth-degree frostbite. A helicopter airlifted him to Whitehorse General Hospital. At the time, it was clear he needed amputation.
"Whether I had hallucinations or not, whether someone saw me or not, whether there was a shelter or not, the moral of this is that I am alive," he said. "No matter what, I am alive."
