No time for coasting

Pam Fernandes was diagnosed with diabetes when she was 4 years old. She has been blind for more than 20 years and had a kidney transplant in 1987. Still, it's easy to forget her disabilities when Fernandes proudly shows off the gold medal she won while setting a world record in the 2000 Sydney Paralympics.

Fernandes, 43, retired from bike racing seven months ago, and is figuring out what to do next. Or what she can do, given the limitations that some, including prospective employers, see as a drawback.

But Fernandes is plowing ahead, undeterred. She teaches spinning classes three days a week, coaches bicycle racers indoors twice a week, and works part time at a company in Waltham. And she is a motivational speaker, finding it easy to provide drive by drawing on what she's accomplished.

Fernandes took her message to the Dana Hall School in Wellesley last week, speaking to 450 students as part of the school's weeklong celebration of National Women and Girls in Sports Week. Students lined up for Fernandes's autograph and tried on her gold medal after her presentation.

"When things happen to you in your life, you have to figure out why," she said. "I think I was meant to teach. I'm not afraid to tell people the real deal, that life's tough sometimes. It's tough for me and it's tough for you, but what I do know is that you have the power to get through it."

When Fernandes mounts her stationary bike to teach a spinning class, she lets the students know what they're in for.

"I tell them I'm visually impaired," she said. "I say, `I'll show you how to do things and tell you how to do things and pretty much after that, we're on the honor system.' "

The spinners have good reason to trust Fernandes as she leads them on an often grueling journey, up and down imaginary hills, for an hour. Fernandes, who raced for 12 years, is a three-time Paralympic medalist. She competed on the road and the track on a tandem bike with a sighted partner, called a pilot.

She became certified to teach spinning last year, but said it took her a long time to get a job, until Gold's Gym in Needham decided to give her a shot.

Amy Abbatomarco, group fitness director at Gold's Gyms, had only a slight hesitation before hiring Fernandes.

"The one concern I initially had was how could she set up a new student on the bike and make adjustments on their position, but I've seen her do it," Abbatomarco said. "In the beginning, I was curious what the reaction from the students would be, but they said she was great, and one person said she really didn't need to say she was blind." Fernandes said, "[Abbatomarco] never doubted for a minute that I could do it, and I don't meet too many people like that."

Fernandes, who grew up in Stratford, Conn., and lives in Needham, was a freshman at Wheelock College when she was told she had diabetic retinopathy.

"How can you fathom blindness when you have no pain, when you have 20-20 vision?" she said. She was aspiring to be a physician's assistant in a pediatric ward and "had the world by the horns."

But the next year, the retina in her right eye had detached, and the vision was gone, and the following year, she lost the vision in her left eye. By the time she was 21, she was legally blind and started learning Braille. Now she can only sense light and dark.

Fernandes then learned she had a kidney disease, also because of diabetes. "In a way, it was worse than losing my vision, because I was sick all the time," she said.

For the next five years, she underwent dialysis, until 1987, when she received a transplant and "I could get my body back."

Fernandes went through rehabilitation and joined a gym, but after five years, she got bored with climbing the StairMaster and lifting weights.

"I was starting to feel good, but needed a goal, I wanted a reason to work out," she said.

She signed up for the Prudential Center Star Climb, then did a 3-kilometer run. She started riding a tandem bicycle for recreation and in fund-raisers, and her biking escalated after a weeklong training camp at the Olympic Center in Colorado Springs.

"When I came home, I thought, `Do I want to race, or do I want to just keep riding?' "

"But, not only have I had challenges my whole life, but I like goals."

Her first race in front of friends and family in Connecticut was a disappointment. "But I kept at it and started flying all over the country to race," she said.

In 1993, she won the nationals in her first year of racing, then represented the United States in the World Championships in Belgium, where she won the silver medal in the road race event.

But her dream was to race in the Paralympics and her chance came in the 1996 Atlanta Games.

She and her pilot raced in five events and placed in the top five in every event, winning the bronze medal in the 1-kilometer ride on the track. That became her favorite -- and most successful -- race.

"Since then, I have rarely been beaten on that, in the US or otherwise," she said. "As it turns out, that is the event I continued to win for years, regardless of partners." (She has always teamed with men in the mixed tandem event.)

For the Sydney Games, she said, "I felt mentally and physically prepared."

The day she arrived in Sydney, Fernandes fell down stairs and broke her right foot, but 10 days later, she won the gold with a world record in the 1-kilometer race. The next day, she won a silver in the match sprint.

The next year, she won two golds in the European Championships, and in 2002, she won two golds again and set a world record in the 1-kilometer at the World Championships. Fernandes had planned on competing in the Athens Paralympics, but decided against it after the mixed tandem category was eliminated.

She competed in some races with female partners, but decided to retire last year.

"It was a very painful decision, because it's what my life has been for 12 years -- `Pam Fernandes the athlete, who got sponsored, who traveled around the world to go bike racing.' And I liked the fact that I had been training so hard that I'd gained an enormous amount of health. I haven't been hospitalized overnight once since I started racing."

She remains involved in cycling even though she's not racing, but she isn't sure what her next move will be.

"It's only been seven months, so I'm not going to be hard on myself," she said. "I've always had to deal with compromises, so I'm just sort of regrouping. No matter what path I choose, there's going to be more struggle for me than a sighted person, so I want to make sure it's what I really want to do."