10 · SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2017 ADAPTING & ADJUSTING COMPETITIVE SPIRIT Talk to Attila Domos for any length of time and it quickly becomes obvious that this is a man with a lot going on at any particular moment. The Squirrel Hill resident, who turns 49 in late May, will go from talking about a 100-mile ride he just took on his handcycle to staying up late in his home music studio working on a new song, then back to how he hopes to officially break the 24-hour hand-cycling world record later this year. Although life changed dramatically after an accident left Domos paralyzed from the waist down at the age of 25, it certainly didn’t end. His competitive spirit hasn’t waned, either. Domos won the handcycle division of the Pittsburgh Marathon on May 7 with a time of 1:28:28, but he was hoping to break the course record of 1:19:54, set by Tom Davis, of Fremont, Ind., in 2013. The fact that he didn’t left him with mixed feelings. “My time wasn’t what I wanted,” said Do-mos, who was slowed in his efforts on race day by wet streets at the start of the race, wind at the end and potholes throughout. “It was good enough to win, but, I don’t know, you always feel like you could have done better.” Domos has always had plenty of goals and accomplished one big one on Sept. 22, 1993. That day, his rock band, Big Bad Wolf, signed a recording contract. About five hours later, Domos fell 15 feet from a ladder. “Next thing I remember was being sur-rounded by people, everyone talking at the same time, telling me to move my feet, asking me where I am,” he said. “I had no idea what was going on.” After being in and out of consciousness for two days, Domos woke to learn that he was a T11/T12 paraplegic and would never walk again. In his mind, however, Domos knew he would. He had no doubt. “But it didn’t turn out that way,” he said. “I was the typical person like, ‘No, that’s for people who don’t have the will power.’ But you quickly learn that will power has nothing to do with it.” Now, one of Domos’ chief peeves when it comes to how the disabled are treated and portrayed in the media is when he hears or reads stories of people who were paralyzed but “worked really hard and made a miracu-lous recovery.” “I’m like, no, that’s not how it works,” Do-mos said. “Stop selling that story to people because that’s not how it works. Because now people look at me and think, ‘Well, he must be lazy, because look at her, she could do it, why can’t you?’ People say, ‘If you just believed in God harder,’ or ‘If you just tried harder,’ this and that, and I’m like OK, what-ever. If that makes you sleep better at night.” Domos spent three months in a rehab facility, where he slowly began to accept the reality of his new life. Then he came home and had do it all over again. It was there that frustration often set in, his younger brother said. “As happens with everyone who goes through a traumatic change, I think, you deal with anger, bitterness, jealousy and sometimes it drove him insane,” said Csaba Domos, 42. “Something as simple as playing video games, I’d run upstairs to go to the bathroom and be back down in a minute. For him, that was a 15-minute process. So things like that CHRISTIAN TYLER RANDOLPH | TRIBUNE-REVIEW were very rough on him at first, especially because he was always so athletic and moti-vated and good at everything he did.” Attila Domos was a kicker on the Allderdice football team, Csaba said, as well as the back-up quarterback. Beyond that, Attila was the frontman of his band. Csaba said his brother was a lot like Van Halen’s David Lee Roth on stage, jumping around and doing crazy roundhouse kicks and other maneuvers. “To have all that taken away was very rough,” Csaba said. “He wanted to give up at times, but he never did. He’s a very strong-minded person. Not everybody is truly like that.” The house Attila Domos now shares with his father in Squirrel Hill is still not fully equipped for someone in a wheelchair. A steep, twisting set of cement and wooden Paralysis doesn’t slow down multitalented Squirrel Hill racer Attila Domos crosses the finish line to win the men’s hand cycle race during the 2017 Pittsburgh Marathon on May 7. Domos, 48, was paralyzed from the waist down in an accident when he was 25, but he has found an outlet for his competitive spirit in racing. BY KAREN PRICE
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