What strikes you first about Walter Raineri the blind skier who trains at Tahoe Cross Country Ski Area is not his incredible drive for life but his lack of fear. Skiing miles of cross-country trails by himself then walking a mile along a busy street to catch the bus into Tahoe City all without benefit of sight? No problem. What do you expect from a guy who regularly competes in sailboat races in fierce San Francisco Bay winds does 100-mile bike rides and races kayaks?
When Raineri was five his family physician told him that someday he might go blind from retitnitus pigmentosa (RP) a hereditary disease that attacks your retinas. Fortunately before the disease progressed to the point that he lost his vision Raineri graduated from UC Berkeley in 1982 and obtained his CPA certification in 1985. Next he went on to earn his law degree from Georgetown University before becoming a successful tax lawyer and a partner in a major Bay Area firm.
Then at the age of 45 his world changed. The RP rapidly progressed severely attacking the retinas in both of his eyes. As a result Raineri lost almost all of his functional vision during a five-month period in the beginning of 2005. Raineri was the last of four brothers to lose their sight (his two sisters can still see). ‘It was a tough summer learning to adapt to a new life without vision’ he said. So he turned to athletics to ‘keep the walls from closing in.’ He began with tandem cycling. Raineri now rides several century rides each year including one with friends around Lake Champlain on the border between Vermont and New York. He also became a proficient sailor and joined a blind sailboat racing team that represented the United States in the 2009 World Championship of Blind Sailing in New Zealand. And then there is kayak racing (tandem) in which he competes against fully sighted teams.
While it is the joy of spending time in nature which he says is ‘tragically and beautifully indifferent’ to his plight that drives Raineri it is also fear that he will find himself like many visually impaired people trapped inside a house too scared to face a world he cannot see. Fortunately ever since he was a child Raineri says he has never ‘suffered boredom easily; I have to get out there and do stuff.’ His zest for life has not only been maintained despite his lack of sight but has been enhanced and directed toward athletic accomplishments.
Raineri’s cross-country skiing career began a year ago at a Ski for Light event in Colorado. Ski for Light is a program that provides opportunities for visually or mobility impaired people to ski. With only two days of cross-country skiing experience Raineri was up against some of the best visually impaired Nordic skiers in the world.
‘I think my experienced guide thought he had been paired with the wrong skier when he found out that I really had no experience at all’ says Raineri who finished in fourth place. ‘Well in the course of a week he realized that I was serious about this new activity.’ This past February after spending several weeks training at Tahoe Cross-Country Raineri won the Ski for Light International 5 km race at Soldier Hollow in Utah with the fastest time of any of the racers. Now he is training for the U.S. championships in December 2012 ‘to see if I have the chops to … represent the U.S. in the Paralympics in Russia in 2014.’
Anybody who has skied with Raineri thinks he has a shot at it. Last year Raineri skied the Great Ski Race with Alison Ansley as his guide. Ansley is an instructor at Tahoe Cross Country and world explorer who a few months later climbed to the top of Denali in Alaska. ‘He was so fast’ says Ansley about Raineri. ‘I was skate skiing and he was striding and I still had to ski pretty hard to keep up with him.’
Raineri brings to mind another great Tahoe-area athlete wheelchair racer and sit skier Candace Cable who took a sack of lemons dropped on her head in the form of a horrible car accident and turned it into a great big batch of athletic-accomplishment lemonade. Cable’s motto is ‘The deal is how you deal.’ Raineri has certainly learned how to deal.
~ Tim Hauserman teaches and directs the Strider-Glider program at Tahoe Cross Country Ski Area. Comment on this story below.
