A young thrill-seeker from the Laurentians, paralyzed after surviving a crash at nearly 100 km/h during a jump last fall, is still clinging to his dream of becoming a skydiving instructor.
“I keep thinking about it. My first goal is to walk again,” says Sam Constantin with confidence, on the line, after leaving the physiotherapist.
On September 29, the 22-year-old resident of Saint-Adèle, passionate about extreme sports, told himself that he had time for a parachute jump before a busy weekend, he who had 170 to his name .
The 22-year-old during a previous jump.
PHOTO COURTESY of Sam Constantin
“I shouldn’t have jumped. I had a marathon, but I went anyway. It takes 500 jumps to be an instructor, he says. And from my first one, I knew I wanted to do this when I wasn’t snowboarding.”
Unexpected
The young man therefore went to Parachute Montreal, where he had been jumping frequently for three seasons.
“At first, the jump was fine. But I started a different maneuver to arrive parallel to the landing and gain speed, between 50 and 100 feet above the ground. It requires a lot of experience,” explains the man who assures that he had the necessary background to attempt this maneuver, which he had already succeeded in.
However, when releasing the cables, his parachute did not cooperate as expected.
“I was arriving so fast, between 80 to 100 km/h. I didn’t have time to brake. I hit the ground, then I bounced back, he remembers. Under the impact, my L2 vertebra exploded.”
“I was conscious the whole time. I felt immediately [que ça n’allait pas]», Continues Sam Constantin.
Six weeks
A site manager who saw him in the air quickly understood that he had carried out his maneuver at too low an altitude and that his landing would be catastrophic. She alerted 911.
“Lying on the ground, I remember wanting to call my job to say that I couldn’t go back,” he said, laughing, to illustrate the dose of adrenaline that was in him.
We see him here asleep on his hospital bed.
PHOTO COURTESY of Sam Constantin
The following night, he had surgery on his spine and ankle. The seriously injured man was released from hospital in mid-November, after more than six weeks of convalescence.
Tirelessly
Since then, even though he is paralyzed from the waist down, Sam Constantin hopes to regain all his sensations in his legs, which are slowly recovering.
Specialists do not advance too much on his subject, according to him, but find him lucky, believing that there is still hope… in the long term.
To continue to believe, Sam strives to walk with orthotics and a walker, to do multiple strengthening exercises, and to stimulate his muscles using an electrostimulator, in particular.
“I often have moments of depression,” he said. I fully agree, but it’s more the fatigue of fighting, of making the effort to recover, that is difficult. It impacts all my loved ones who spend a lot of energy on me.”
He will jump again
In the meantime, the crossfit coach is holding on to his physical training, so that he can one day realize his dream of teaching snowboarding and skydiving.
Sam Constantin all smiles after a brilliantly successful jump.
Photo taken from Facebook, Sam Constantin
His accident won’t even stop him from jumping again.
“At first, I was hesitant. But I thought about it. I want to come back as a customer next summer. Despite what we think, skydiving is not dangerous, especially not in tandem. It was my maneuver that was dangerous. It’s human error. I wouldn’t try it again. I lost too much,” he concludes.
PHOTO COURTESY of Sam Constantin