CINCINNATI — An engineering project from a former University of Cincinnati student now means a veteran and paralympic athlete will be able to keep on cycling in any kind of weather.
When Omar Duran was blown off a mountain while serving his country in the Army he faced the biggest battle of his life: Recovery.
“It took about almost a two-year recovery, to get into the pieces you see now,” Duran said.
A former marathoner and endurance athlete, he called on that strength to pull him through the broken back, pelvis and other injuries that left him paralyzed from the waist down.
“I woke up and I was just like, 'what's the next steps?'" said Duran. "I've seen guys that did not go so well, you know, and but I think for majority of us that have been through it, we're just bred that way, like, keep fighting, keep moving forward."
He did just that and took up handcycling, which has led to national championships as a U.S. paralympic athlete. The training can be grueling and when focused on an upcoming cross-country race there’s one main obstacle he faces: Rain.
“There's too many rainy days, I need to figure out how to keep riding,” Duran said.
Unlike other cyclists who can easily put their bike onto a stationary trainer when it rains, Omar Duran didn’t have a stationary trainer that adapts to his handcycle.
So that's where a group of University of Cincinnati engineering students entered his story.
“I was really excited about this project. Because Omar's like a high performing athlete. And I thought that was really cool,” said Jack Barchet, a recently-graduated, former UC engineering student. “I'm an endurance athlete, and I thought it would be really cool to to have my project kind of work with and around another endurance athlete.”
Barchet teamed up with two other engineering students, Evan Papadopoulos and Kyle Becker, to take on a project brought to them by Quality of Life Plus or QL+.
“Every time we come to a university and offer a project, we always have students jump on just basically because they're serving veterans or assisting veterans and first responders,” said Jason Whitman with QL+. “Our whole focus is serving veterans, first responders and those who end up becoming wounded, ill or injured.”
Barchet and his fellow students took on the challenge of adapting a stationary trainer for Duran's handcycle as part of their university capstone project.
Using the 1819 Innovation Hub to build their prototype, Barchet's team had the chance to go over the design with Duran in person in early April to tweak components to better suit his needs.
“It changes everything changes the whole game, because, you know, the typical person that rides this, you know, taking their bike off and on the trainer, I mean, you're spending 20 minutes, just pulling everything out and getting situated, getting all your stuff set up,” Duran said.
Now, he’ll have a trainer that is ready at any time he is ready, without the need to take extra time to set up every time he wants or needs to train indoors due to inclement weather.
The students are still focused on finishing the product, even though their graduations have come and gone.
“If things need retouched and reworked, we'll be happy to do that as well,” Barchet said.
You can read more about the QL+ mission and Omar Duran’s story on their website.
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