Beatrice "Bebe" Vio, age 15, started fencing classes since she was very young. However at age 11 she became victim of a very serious meningitis, that forced her to lose both legs and arms (so one could say that there's also a little bit of Rin in her) and start to use prosthetics. She didn't lose her passion though, and after a short period she began again to take fencing lessons. She expressed the desire to participate to London Paralympics 2012 as a fencer (she is also the only one fencer in the world without both arms and legs), but she wasn't chosen; however, thanks to the Paralympic.org site that started a petition to vote the torchbearers for the ceremony, she received more than 1000 mails and was subsequently asked to be a torchbearer.
I call her the "Italian Emi" not only because she's a cute, petite blonde girl, but also and more importantly because she has a very positive attitude: in every interview she always stresses the fact that she loves life and has no regrets about what happened to her, and sees sport as a mean to improve herself and do what she likes the most (though I have no idea if she also likes to take it in the ass LOL). I also know that she met with cripple runner legend Oscar Pistorius and expressed the desire to wear sometimes those running prosthetics: I couldn't find a photo of her with these, or the illusion would have been complete!
She and PistoriusJokes aside, I really like this story and I hope that Bebe will one day gain awards for her efforts and find her Hisao (not in the literal sense, obviously). What do you think?
