Isaiah Pead’s hopes of returning to the NFL ended in November 2016, when injuries from a car crash required most of his left leg to be amputated. Now the former running back is looking to sprint past the competition in another athletic realm: the Paralympics, where Pead said he was “going for the gold.”
In recent comments to TMZ Sports, Pead said he was recently asked by friends, “What’s your goal?” He pointed to the 2020 Paralympics as the first Games he could “get in,” when he will be 30 years old.
“The next one I’ll be 34, and the next one I’ll be 38, so I think maybe three gold medals. [Get] those three in the Paralympics, God be willing, that sounds like a hell of a career, right there,” Pead said with chuckle.
A football star at the University of Cincinnati, Pead was a second-round pick by the Rams in 2012 after being named MVP of the Senior Bowl. He struggled for playing time with the Rams while missing the 2014 season altogether with a torn knee ligament, then spent the early part of the 2016 season with the Dolphins before becoming a free agent.
After the car accident, which also injured former Cincinnati teammate Wesley Richardson, then-Bearcats coach Tommy Tuberville said Pead was speeding when a tire blew out. “He’ll never play again, obviously,” Tuberville said at the time. “It’s just devastating.”
Pead told TMZ Sports that he was amputated at “mid-thigh,” which could put him at a competitive disadvantage. He said his understanding was that the best Paralympic sprinters were “cut off right at the knees, so they have their whole, full thigh, and their whole, full hamstring.”
Nevertheless, the Columbus, Ohio, native was not only undaunted but recently tweeted out what he called “fair warning to the Paralympic world.” Pead added, “I like to talk some mess, that’s what gets me through my competitions, so I don’t know who’s on the leader boards right now, but I’m comin’.”
Noting that he won high school titles in the 100-meter and 400-meter sprints, Pead said, “The 400 was my race, I want to run that.” However, he acknowledged that “as you start to lose, higher up on your leg, it gets more difficult to compete,” and he might have to consider the long jump or high jump instead.
At least initially, though, the goal is to turn a severe injury that ended one dream into an opportunity to chase another. Of the leg that’s being fitted for a prosthetic, Pead said, “I’ve still got a little bit of it, and I can still run, and I’ll just have to … get the dynamics figured out.
“But if they let me on the track,” Pead continued with a grin, “I’m going for the gold, period, you understand?”
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