Milan Petrovi\u0107 has come to Chicago to run his first major marathon. At 38 years old, he’s run more than 30 half marathons and a full marathon overseas, and he’s done that as a person who has been blind since the age of 11. <\/p>\n
Petrovi\u0107 is from Belgrade, Serbia. He will be running in the Chicago Marathon on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“I’m very happy because I am first time in Chicago,” he said as he picked up his race credentials at McCormick Place.<\/p>\n
His goal is to run all seven major marathons \u2013 Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Sydney, and Tokyo.<\/p>\n
He has competed in the Paralympics in Tokyo and London, riding the tandem bike, placing 7th and 11th.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Petrovi\u0107 also completed an Ironman triathlon in Romania. He’s only one of six people in the world to have done it as a blind person, but for him, completing the Ironman was “normal.”<\/p>\n
“That is my life. Sports is my life,” he said.<\/p>\n
Petrovi\u0107 lost his eyesight after a bout with cancer at the age of 11. He has completed most of his competitions with running and triathlon guide Dejan Ivankovic by his side, as he will be Sunday in Chicago. <\/p>\n
“It is my pleasure to be his eye on the course,” Ivankovic said.<\/p>\n
Petrovi\u0107’s hometown of Belgrade is a sister city to Chicago, which has one of the largest Serbian communities in the United States. The Belgrade Marathon Foundation is sponsoring his trip and has awarded him as one of their heroes of the Belgrade Marathon.<\/p>\n
“We are trying to represent and help people with disabilities,” Belgrade Marathon director Darko Habus said. “Those are the people that they are telling the stories for all of us that everything is possible.”<\/p>\n
Petrovi\u0107 said blindness is not a limitation for him. He said he can do anything, without limits.<\/p>\n
“Never give up,” he said.<\/p>\n
Petrovi\u0107\u00a0gives new meaning to believing in your dreams and achieving them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Milan Petrovi\u0107 has come to Chicago to run his first major marathon. At 38 years old, he’s run…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":293194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,136666,5386,1818,89637],"class_list":{"0":"post-293193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-chicago-marathon","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-serbia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}