-- Former soccer player Kazuyuki Kyoya revealed a glimpse of his professional past when he talked about his experiences with the Japanese wheelchair basketball team at last year's Sydney Paralympics.
"I didn't feel particularly excited because we had our first game the next day. We hadn't gone to Sydney to party," he said when asked if the Oct. 18 opening ceremony, watched by 120,000 at Stadium Australia, had given him goose bumps.
Kyoya, 29, played in the midfield for JEF United Ichihara in 1993, the inaugural season of the J-League, until he had a car accident Nov. 28 of the same year while driving to a dress rehearsal for his wedding. He was left paralyzed from the chest down.
Told by doctors that he would never walk again, Kyoya, who married his fiancee, Yoko, in the hospital 11 days after the accident, took just three months to get the sport bug again following a chance meeting with Osamu Kotaki, Japan's wheelchair basketball coach.