Hein Wanger is breaking all the records

Completing the Cape to Rio yacht race, managing a World Land Speed Record and skydiving from 10 000 feet are feats that will even make the original Braveheart, William Wallace, quiver in his boots once he realises these were achieved by a blind man.

Hein Wagner boasts these accomplishments, and when he was six months old, doctors detected a medical condition called Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis, which in layman’s terms means that he was blind.

The first sign that he was no ordinary mortal, but an adventurous child with a pioneering spirit, was when his mother, Marlene Wagner – the then South African netball captain – found her seven-year old in the pine tree in the backyard, surveying the neighbourhood from 12 metres up.

One of South Africa’s most celebrated motivational speakers, Wagner’s curriculum vitae is impressive, but his adventurous exploits may scare some fainthearted souls.

He broke the World Blind Land Speed Record by becoming the fastest blind driver in the world in October 2009 by averaging a speed of 322.5km/h in a Mercedes SL65 AMG Black series.

Wagner’s flirtation with speed continued in February 2010, when he set a lap record around the East London Grand Prix Circuit.

He completed the New York City Marathon, and in March 2007 negotiated one of the toughest marathons in the world, the Hong Kong event.

This happened in spite of a major hiccup that severely challenged Wagner’s durability.

At a tender age, he climbed the 10 highest mountains in the Western Cape.

Wagner has achieved what Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis would dearly love to do in March 2011, and that is to win a Cricket World Cup.

Wagner and his team won the Blind Cricket World Cup in 1998.

Leaving a legacy has become an obsession for this 38-year-old South African.

He founded a disability-owned enterprise, Visiontree, in March 2004 to assist and equip people globally, regardless of their background or culture, to overcome their personal limitations and to reach their full potential.

As a motivational speaker, Wagner regularly conducts workshops for big corporates such as Old Mutual, Sanlam, Absa, Sasol, Discovery and non-governmental organisations.

He has been invited to inspire global audiences and has visited countries such as Dubai and Indonesia, sharing his recipe for achieving extraordinary results and never allowing his disability to impair his vision.

As his fame is spreading and his appeal is widening, Wagner’s Voyager miles are increasing by the minute while corporate requests from Durban, Johannesburg, George, Kimberley, Port Elizabeth, Windhoek and Harare keep him on the move daily.

As an insecure toddler, it seemed the transition to adulthood would be anything but smooth. And so it proved to be a long and winding road from his early teens, to become an internationally renowned speaker and adventurer.

When he was initially confronted with his own condition, Wagner felt a sense of unease, insecurity and even despair. “There was a pre-primary school in Durbanville, and I remember hiding in the fireplace just to feel more secure.

“My mother was driving a white Volkswagen, and I remember walking out to meet ‘her’ when another white car arrived. But it was somebody else’s mom, and I felt so ashamed for walking out to meet my mother,” says Wagner.

He was terrified when he was first told he had to remain in the residence of the Worcester School for the Blind for the first year without being allowed to go home to Durbanville so that he could adapt quicker to the new lifestyle in Worcester.

Upon his arrival back at home from Worcester, Wagner sensed a change in attitude from the neighbours.

He promptly jumped on his brother’s bicycle and paraded up and down in the street, using the sound of the bicycle chain and its reflection from the pavement as a guideline to move in a straight line.

Wagner challenged the kids from the neighbourhood to a duel, but none of them picked up the gauntlet.

He ventured into a pine tree in the family’s backyard. His mother, terrified of his plummeting to certain death, warned him that there would be severe punishment because of his recklessness and negligence. He stayed in the tree for a long time.

His parents deserve eternal credit because they opted to educate him in a similar way to his brother, Werner, instead of pampering him.

“Recently, I read the report of my Grade A teacher, who said that Hein Wagner was on a perennial expedition,” reminisces Wagner.

From Grade 12 until the age of 22, he became a rebel without a cause, constantly questioning God and the universe on why he was chosen to be the blind one. “My friends went to university, enjoyed a gap year or visited other countries, while my only option was to be a switchboard operator,” he says.

“There was intense anger and resentfulness. I was a miserable person.

“The turning point came when I went on the Cape to Rio yacht race with Paul Thompson, a deaf skipper, and Neels Troskie, who is also blind,” adds Wagner.

“I sensed the vastness of the unbelievable creation when we were sailing 1 000 sea miles from the coast. I realised how small I was, but it also dawned on me that I could achieve anything if you are prepared to toil and put in the hard yards.”

There was no sudden transformation from being ‘Le Misérable’ to the Incredible Hulk.

“My attitude changed gradually. I ultimately decided that if I had to answer the phone 150 times per day, I will do it and I will become the best switchboard operator in the Absa Group. Incidentally, I received the award 18 months later as the best in the Group,” he says.

“As the results beckoned, I broadened my vision and my goals.”

Apart from his parents, Troskie and Thompson, Wagner credits Gert Labuschagne as a mentor who shaped his career. Labuschagne founded a mountain club while at Worcester School for the Blind, and he challenged the other learners to climb with him the 10 highest mountains in the Western Cape.

They once even attempted to reach the peak of Batsberg; however, it was 42°C in the shade after a heat wave – but the blind learners stuck together and reached the peak.

The realisation dawned on Wagner that if he could scale the mountains and cross the ocean, other challenges might not be beyond him.

He lists Young Carr as a mentor who inspired him to pursue his dreams. Carr was a ‘sparring partner’ who helped him to train for the New York Marathon.

Carr told him: “If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, don’t do it.

“If you like to inspire people, pursue that as a career and a day job.”

He introduced Wagner to some literature on motivational speaking, and that was how Visiontree was established. It is a disability-owned enterprise geared to assist and equip people around the world, regardless of background, culture or beliefs, to overcome their personal limitations and reach their full potential.

The first focus of Visiontree was the motivational talks to inspire audiences.

“I wanted to become an everlasting source of inspiration and motivation to individuals or organisations around the globe, that have the desire to achieve extraordinary results,” says Wagner.

Sometimes he greets his audience with the words: “I’m blind. What is your excuse?”

Wagner founded Visiontree with a networking incentive to assist disabled people to find fulfilling jobs in the open labour market.

He has successfully established a database of 1 000 disabled professional candidates, and he operates in conjunction with companies to source disabled candidates for opportunities in the labour market.

The third component is a charity to make the world more accessible to disabled people internationally.

Wagner says one of his toughest challenges when he was approached to work for a company was to ask his new employee to invest in an additional R20 000 to purchase software so that he could read the data.

Finding financial resources so that other disabled people can access data, is one of his greatest passions. “If I can sponsor that software for adaptive technology, I remove the barrier for somebody to employ a blind person,” he says.

The formation of Visiontree was the motivation for all the adventures.

Wagner’s list of achievements would pour scorn on many able-bodied athletes.

He is still indebted to his navigator, Ray Wakefield, for breaking that World Blind Land Speed Record in a Mercedes, and for setting the lap record around the East London Grand Prix Circuit.

“Ray has a calm and relaxed persona, and if you have somebody who becomes too tense or petrified, the mission might be doomed,”
says Wagner.

“He divides the road or runway in nine sectors, with five in the middle, one to four to the left and six to nine to the right. I stay on five to stay alive, and he corrects me by shouting the number I’m on.

“It is very tough to prepare for something like this. It is an immense head game and involves intense focus. You cannot have too many warm-up laps for it because every time you attempt it, the risk becomes immense,” explains Wagner.

He has endured some setbacks during marathons, particularly in Hong Kong.

Usually he has a navigator tied to him with a rope, three-quarter of a metre long.

During the Hong Kong Marathon, he and the navigator had the goal of completing it in three hours and 45 minutes, but his partner started vomiting four kilometres from the finish because of a virus and that last stretch ultimately took them 105 minutes to complete.

One of Wagner’s ultimate accolades was the splendid manner in which he and a blind Kenyan colleague won a Standard Chartered Bank Ironman event in Korea under extreme weather conditions in August 2006.

Initially, it was supposed to be a triathlon, but it was downgraded to a duathlon because of an electrical storm on the water.

Wagner completed his cycling event in five hours and four minutes over 180km, while the Kenyan runner completed the marathon in two hours and 31 minutes, with the remarkable efforts of the South African and Kenyan resulting in a duathlon victory.

Wagner skydived from 10 000 feet and bungee-jumped from one of the highest bridges in the world at the Victoria Falls.

Fear would be a mitigating factor for many able-bodied people who would not attempt half of the adventures that have been successfully negotiated by the Capetonian.

Asked how he has managed to conquer it, Wagner says: “I have learnt to befriend fear. It gives you balance because you have to acknowledge fear. It points out legitimate risks.

“I accept fear for what it is, and for advising me on possible alarms, but I do not allow fear to paralyse or defeat me.”

His personal recipe for extraordinary results is to greet every day with a smile and “to thank my Creator for life, for the ability to love and dream”.

Wagner adds: “I also believe that if you can sustain your basic fitness levels, you will have the energy to reach the goals within the time limits you originally decided upon. I remind myself 10 or 15 times daily about my ultimate goal to inspire as many people as possible in my life time.

“I also commit one random act of kindness once a day to another person because it changes the world.”

Wagner believes in the power of positive beliefs and affirmation.

Asked what his message would be for a national audience if summoned by the president to inspire the people, he says: “If people just realised in what incredibly beautiful country we lived, and if we can just embrace our differences without being judgemental about race or culture of disability, we would become great.

“Namibia achieved independence four years prior to South Africa, but there is such a unity and mutual respect there. They
are integrated.

“If we can achieve something similar in South Africa, we will become the jewel of the global population. It is not incidental that the Cullinan Diamond was unearthed in South Africa,” Wagner adds.

He believes in self-acceptance as a basis for personal growth. “If you allow the world to label you, it will cripple you.

“If you personalise other people’s bias and preconceived ideas about you, it could paralyse you. Take what you have and make the best of it. Once you do this, you become an inspiration to people around you,” he says.

Wagner’s CV is incomplete. He wants to finish the Cape Epic in 2011.

A medium-term goal is to fly a Boeing 747-400 from London to Cape Town, and to raise R10 million for charity in achieving this “Mission Impossible V”.

“What drives me to greater heights is the fear to become the miserable sod that I used to be in my late teens and early 20s,” says Wagner.

Inspiring people is something very close to my heart. I know how it feels to be totally uninspired, and I was there for a long time.

“Anyone can achieve great things against all odds. We’re all individuals, and because of our individuality, we deserve to achieve extraordinary things in life, whatever we choose them to be,” he concludes. ▲

Fanie Heyns

• |2011-08-23 08:33:25 Yolandi  - You are amazing
  Hallo Hein
  
  You inspired me tremendously when you spoke to the Marketing and Communication team in August.
  
  When I read your achievements again, it dawned on me that you can make a difference in the life's of many more Absa employees.
  
  Are you perhaps available and would you consider to come and talk to the Absa Internal Audit team on 22 September at 13:00?
  
  How much do you charge Absa or do you do it as a favour? What are your requirements?
  
  Looking forward to hear from you - have a super day.
  
  Yolandi Heath
  082 464 8818
  
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• |2011-09-23 14:56:00 Vania Leonard  - Mentors
  Young Carr is also my mentor and inspiration for many of my achievements. I thank the Lord every day for placing people in our lives that inspire us. Well done and keep on doing what you are doing.
  
  Vania
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