Steven cycling at dusk
Steven Berveling is very tall and thin. The white shirt and dark pants make him look professional.
“It’s very nice to meet you,” he greets me in a gentle voice, standing at attention and stretching his hand to shake mine. He has a witty yet shy smile on his face that lights up the dim room and makes him look like a child rather than a man in his fifties.
When we sit at the glass table in Steven’s office in Martin Place Chambers, I look at this professional environmental barrister and find it hard to imagine him as a tough competitive cyclist with HIV who just raced across the United States again this year.
Nor can I imagine what he has been through in the past 16 years since he was diagnosed in 1996. He lost his eyesight for almost 12 months and had to stop cycling.
“When my sight returned I remained frightened to get back on my bike – I feared that I might not get the emergency treatment if I had a crash,” he says.
He ran a bit, swam a bit, but didn’t like it at all. He missed his bicycle and missed the feeling of riding, so he went back to it in 2007. I ask why he’s so passionate, or in his partner Brian’s words, ‘obsessed’, with cycling.
He just laughs: “Because I’m free, and the wind is in my hair and I can see things and I can go all sorts of distances. It’s just something I so enjoy.”
Steven Berveling Riding for HIV Hope
I believe that because I can see the sparkle in his eyes.
In 2010, Steven entered the cycling race at the World Gay Games in Cologne, Germany, where he won three gold medals for his age category.
“When it transpired that only two of us won three gold medals for cycling, what many other cyclists found was that it wasn’t me, Steven, who won the three golds. It was the positive boy. And that, then, was a great inspiration for others who are HIV positive to say, ‘Look, I can do it too!’”
Steven smiles. Now the three gold medals are silently lying on the cabinet in his office, alongside other medals, his family pictures and his white barrister’s wig.
One of the main reasons Steven went to Cologne was to raise awareness of his international team with HIV positive riders competing in the Race Across America in June 2011, which is considered one of the most difficult and gruelling endurance sports in the world.
In 2011 in the United States, his team, Team4HIVHope, crossed the whole country from San Diego California to Baltimore Maryland, a distance of 5,000 km with another 30,000 vertical metres of climbing. The team finished the race in six days, six hours and 34 minutes and ranked 8th out of 32 teams.
This June they went back to do it all over again and the four racers and 14-member crew completed the 5000-kilometre race in six days, 19 hours and 47 minutes, coming in 9th place in relation to the four-person teams and securing first place in their age division.
“We raced 24 hours per day, in relay format, and each of us got about three to four hours of sleep per day,” Steven says.
“The time of day was irrelevant; what mattered was the rhythm and fury of the race! It was really like one day with six sunsets and six sunrises. The adrenaline never stops which was a huge buzz for our racers and crew.”
The food intake was also huge – the team averaged about 8500-10,000calories per day, which had to be easily digestible so that it did not impact on the racing.
“Whereas last year we had a tail wind going through Kansas, this year there was a 50kph head and side gale. This was very trying and slowed us (and all other racers) down significantly.
“Fortunately we had very little rain and the nights remained comfortable, even at 3am.”
What motivated Steven and his team to undertake such a tough challenge was the desire to show people living with HIV that they can do things: they don’t have to wait to die.
Team 4HIVHope Oceanside June 2012
“We carried out our medical experiment throughout the race, taking daily blood samples from each of the four racers to determine the physiological impact on anyone doing a very tough endurance event, and whether having HIV impacts on that. The very preliminary results indicate that it does not,” he explains.
“Another reason our team takes part in the race across America is to emphasise the recent relaxation of visa entry to the US for HIV positive people. In the past we were denied entry.”
Team member Jim Williams, who has developed a deep camaraderie with Steven and shares Steven’s love for cycling, confirms: “It was more than just coming in a certain place. We had a goal for reducing the stigma attached to HIV, and that is something altogether different and much more difficult to measure. It was important that the team was successful in its mission, that we did make a difference. ”
Fortunately, Steven has a very supportive family, especially his sister. When he gave a speech at his old university, his sister was with him. He said addressing the 250 students: “My sister is here because she loves me and supports me. So can you, dear students, please love and support your brother and sister, your child, your grandchild, your neighbour’s child, because they need it as well.”
Steven’s partner Brian Crump is also very supportive. They have been together for 23 years. Brian is not HIV positive but he has no issues with Steven being HIV positive. Steven says with gratitude and satisfaction: “I’m very lucky, extremely lucky – both in his reaction to me having HIV and in his constant care and support.”
With all this love and support, Steven gets to enjoy his life more.
“I know I’m extremely positive about living life and I’m absolutely certain that whilst I am alive, I live it to the full. But don’t let that suggest that I am relaxed about people getting HIV. My primary message remains avoid getting HIV. Just avoid it,” he says.
“I sound like I’m having fun, and yes I am having fun and I make the best of it. But it’s not much fun living with HIV. You have the constant discrimination and you have to ensure that the medication keeps working.
“There are long-term issues with living with HIV; you want to avoid all that stuff. So it gets back to the real basic message: don’t get HIV.
“But,” Steven laughs, “let’s be realistic. Accidents happen. And if it does happen, it ain’t the end of the world.”
When people get hit in the head with a baseball bat, they have two choices. They can either lie on the ground withering away or they can stand up, wipe the dust off their pants and keep going. That’s what Steven has chosen.
“I suspect, as much as anything, I’m very grateful that I’m positive about life because it helps me. Equally exciting is the fact that I can help the next generation because they’ve got to make the world a better place,” he says in a solemn tone.
“And in my tiny way, if I can help one kid to stay alive, not get HIV, or at least get the medication and live life and keep going, it is worthwhile. How simple is that? And we’ve got to do that; that’s part of my generation’s responsibility. And it’s fun,” Steven smiles.
For him, living is fun, because he gets to do what he’s always loved: cycling. Steven plans to take part in Race Across America again in 2013, solo. He is also going to enter the next World Gay Games in 2014 in Cleveland, Ohio. He has so many things to do, so many things to enjoy and have fun with.
“I’m so grateful for being alive regardless of what I do. I don’t just enjoy being alive, I don’t just like being alive. I LOVE being alive! I just LOVE it. And the cycling is a means by which I can confirm that I’m alive.”
