“With a transplanted heart, we do not survive, we live, we live again”, Boris returns as a medalist from the World Ski Championships in Italy

Boris Lapière, un coeur greffé médaillé aux Mondiaux de ski. – K. H.

His life could have come to an abrupt end in 2019. Today, he continues sporting challenges with a message: transplant saves. Talking about transplantation means talking about death but above all about life!

A big winner's smile and four medals (three silver, one bronze) around your neck! Boris Lapière has just returned from the Ski World Championships in Bormio, Italy, where the French team competed against 24 nations from around the world before finishing second in the medal rankings. A great sporting feat, even more impressive when we know that all the teams only include transplant recipients and dialysis patients. Because since 2019, Boris's life has continued with someone else's heart in his chest.

The French team of transplant recipients and dialysis patients came second in the general ranking

Absolute emergency

That year, in July, a nasty myocarditis struck him down. "In four days, I found myself in intensive care with extracorporeal blood circulation pulsed by two machines. My heart no longer works", says Boris Lapière who remembers these still and uncertain hours. "In intensive care, we are really between life and death even if at the time I didn't really measure it". After nine days, the diagnosis panics: a heart transplant is absolutely urgent. "Luckily, I met all the criteria, I was at the top of the list", he smiled.

After three weeks in cardio and three weeks in a rehabilitation center, an order from the doctors: "Return to a life of reason" , and Boris’s envy:"Getting back into mountain biking and trail running with longer distances than before". Very inspired by the story of Jonathan Drutel, which he read at the ;rsquo;hospital: "Heart-lung transplant due to cystic fibrosis, he managed to run the’Ironman of Nice&quot ;.

"This heart is a gift"

Very quickly, he returns to work in the family carpentry business, slowly puts his sneakers back on, gets on the bike and clocks up the kilometers.

500 heart transplants each year

"Five hundred heart transplants each year is enormous and at the same time insufficient", launches Boris Lapière who measures his luck in having been able to benefit from it in 2019.  Everyone is a potential donor of their organs"except those who specifically refuse and are registered in a specific file, around a third of people refuse organ harvesting", he explains. Even if 80% of people say they agree, there remains the emotional factor at the time of a death when the grieving family must validate this choice. "It is very important to talk about it to those around you, to your loved ones, your parents, your partner so that there is no doubt if one day we have to decide. It's not taboo", insists Boris Lapière. In France, 5,000 people have received heart transplants.

"When I was in the hospital, my wife discovered the National Transplant Games. It gave me a horizon then.Boris Lapière is testing the Summer Games in Narbonne in 2022, cycling and athletics. "Sport but also and above all great human encounters, sharing experiences. Between transplant recipients, we discuss without filter, it feels good, we feel less alone", says the young man who enjoys the game of sporting challenge… until completing giant slalom, slalom, super G and parallel slalom at the beginning of March in Italy at the Worlds.

This heart, received like a gift, "I take care of it", smiled Boris. And his outlook on life evolves: "When I fell ill I had everything, a 4 month old baby, I had just proposed to my wife, we had a house built. A dream life… which would have stopped dead. Nothing is acquired for life."

A great sporting and human adventure in Italy

Thirty kilometers of trail in Mercantour

Every year, in July, the anniversary of his transplant, he sets himself a sporting challenge: last summer, a trail of 30 km and 2,000 km ;nbsp;m difference in altitude in the Mercantour. Next summer, another still secret trail but before that, in two weeks, the Vallon Pont d’Arc raid, 50 km of trail, mountain biking and canoeing. "When I finish a race, I always have a moment of emotion, I think with gratitude of the donor and his family, I think of the luck that I’ rsquo;ai".

Boris Lapière runs to feel alive and to bear witness: "The transplant is taboo, we talk about death. But look, it works. With a transplanted heart, we do not survive, we live, we live again. And even if it will wear out more quickly, he intends to make it go through more hundreds of kilometers of trail.