Taking it all in his stride

The December cold is sharp enough to sting the lungs before sunrise in Lhasa. Nineteen-year-old runner Sonam Gyaltsen squinted toward the eastern horizon, put on sunglasses and started his morning training, unaware that the quiet routine would mark the final chapter of one journey and the beginning of another.

The next day, Sonam left the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau for the first time to compete at China's National Games for Persons with Disabilities and the National Special Olympic Games in Guangzhou.

Born with low vision and learning difficulties, Sonam was about to run on a national stage that once felt impossibly far away.

For Sonam, light has always been complicated. He grew up in Nagchu, deep in the northern mountain areas of Xizang autonomous region, where the average altitude exceeds 4,500 meters and sunlight is both abundant and unforgiving.

"As a child, everyone at school called me 'wuba'," Sonam said softly, using the Tibetan word for owl. Like an owl, his vision was worse during the day and slightly better at night.

At the Nagchu Special Education School, physical education teacher Thubten Kelsang noticed something others overlooked. Despite his limited eyesight, Sonam had long, powerful limbs and a natural sense of rhythm.

"He couldn't see well," Thubten recalled, "but you could tell the track was where he belonged."

Convincing Sonam's family was far more difficult. His father, Tsering Dorje, worried about injuries and doubted whether athletics could ever be a realistic pursuit for a child with such issues.

"My son can't even herd cattle properly," he said at the time. "If a yak runs off, he mistakes it for a truck."

Shaped by his own upbringing in the 1980s, the father doubted whether sports could offer Sonam a real future — at that time, disability sports in Xizang were still in their infancy, focused mainly on basic rehabilitation rather than competition.