Juan Jose Florian: Colombia's Para-cycling 'superhero' and his dramatic life story

Juan Jose Florian's childhood home was in a clearing hacked from the Colombian rainforest. His family earned a living by growing papayas, oranges and avocados. But at night the region belonged to illegal armed groups.

Those who defied the curfew they enforced were taken, tightly bound, and either left for the night or, if they were repeat offenders, executed. Bodies turned up daily on the forest paths.

There were no real roads, no television. Where other children followed football teams, Florian and his elder brother Miller would sneak out and watch the tracer fire that lit up the night sky, cheering on the Colombian army in their conflict with the Farc — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — and other rebel groups.

«When the army was there, we could play outside until late, and the schoolchildren were safe from forced recruitment,» Florian says.

Guerrillas with the Farc — founded in 1966 and disbanded in 2016, when they signed a ceasefire — were regular callers at the family home, demanding food, money and more.

Both Florian and his brother Miller resolved to become soldiers when they grew up. When Miller was 23, he travelled to the nearest town, presented his documents at a checkpoint and was told he was long overdue for compulsory military service. He did not complain.

Some weeks later, a band of Farc soldiers visited Florian's family in their isolated forest clearing with a message. The family had given a son to the forces of reaction, they said, so they owed another to the revolution.

«My mother tried to fight them. She pleaded with them. As they led me away, she blessed me through her tears,» says Florian.

In this way Florian — aged 16 in 1998 — was dragged into a conflict that killed 260,000 people and left more