The Sakakibaras
The Sakakibara family has always been tight knit. Parents Yuki and Martin, devoted to encouraging their daughter Saya (now 25) and son Kai (now 28) in every endeavour. Kai discovered BMX at age 4 and it became his whole world, and his little sister, always keen to do whatever her big brother was doing, took it up in kind.
Things were on track (literally) for the super-striving Sakakibara siblings to set the gold standard in their sport, and then in 2020 both Saya and Kai suffered catastrophic accidents on the track.
Life changed overnight – Kai’s horrific crash left him with a traumatic brain injury. He was in a coma for two months, and when he woke, he could neither walk nor talk. He spent his whole life striving to be an Olympian and found himself needing to reset all of his goals.
Yuki and Martin found themselves becoming Kai’s 24/7 carers. “We didn’t know what we were asking, or what we were in for,” says Martin. “We didn’t know how to be carers, but we knew our son.”
Then Saya suffered her own terrible BMX accident, which left her with injuries and battling and thoughts of quitting the sport entirely. But the unwavering feeling of ‘unfinished business’ ultimately led her to reinvent herself and go on to win gold in the 2024 Paris Olympics – a medal she shared with her brother in a no-dry-faces-in-the-house dedication on the global stage.
Yuki and Martin are still Kai’s caregivers, but he has made a remarkable recovery.
Three years after Kai’s crash he was on the search for a new challenge. No half-measures, he wanted to perform at the highest level — to represent Australia at the Paralympic games. Kai tried his hand at a few sports like track, cycling, badminton, table tennis, and finally he settled on rowing – a sport he had never tried or watched.
In less than two years at the oars, Kai has made tremendous progress and is set to bring home another gold for the Sakakibaras.
Yuki and Martin, thank you for being first-place carers.