Hopes to Teach Others : Blind Karate Champion Bests Handicap

Arms outstretched, David Jainchill walked across the room and felt along the wall until his fingers found the championship trophy he recently won in Black Belt karate.

“He’s very courageous, an intense human being,” said John Giordano, Jainchill’s trainer and friend for 17 years.

Jainchill competes as a featherweight, in the 120-pound range. He’s lithe and sinewy. Spiritually, he’s animated and secure.

It wasn’t always that way.

Jainchill, now 50, was legally blind by before he was 30. A congenital disease, retinitis pigmentosa, began when he was a teen-ager in Paterson, N.J., and gradually claimed 95% of his vision. He has no depth perception and sees only shadows.

“Going blind is a bummer,” said Jainchill, a fifth-degree Go Dan Renchi Black Belt. “It’s an emotional shock to the ego. I felt inadequate, unable to function--then, paranoia.”

When blindness ended his career as a hair stylist, he adopted a destructive life style.

Turned to ‘Fast Life’

“I was carousing, drinking, living the fast life,” he recalls. “I did drugs, including cocaine.”

Karate, he says, was his salvation.

In 1970, while visiting relatives in Florida, Jainchill recalled a childhood fantasy and decided to go for it:

“I walked into Giordano’s place and said, ‘I want to be a Black Belt.’ ”

“I figured I’d chase him out by being tough on him,” Giordano said. He remembers that Jainchill was so out of shape he was stooped and couldn’t kick more than two feet high.

“When I would stretch him, David would scream bloody murder,” said Giordano, who is a sixth-degree Black Belt.

Physical contact was particularly difficult at first.

“He was scared--close your eyes and have someone hit you. Now you can hit him with a chair and he’ll whack you one.”

Giordano’s first problem with his new friend was to get him to use a cane.

Tried to Hide Blindness

“He didn’t want anyone to know he was blind. I remember him walking into poles, and once he walked off a pier with his tackle box and fell 25 feet into the ocean,” Giordano said.

“I look like I see,” said Jainchill, “but I can’t.” His eyes are clear and he does not wear glasses.

Jainchill had to take part in contact competition as a karate novice.

“I remember the first tournament I put him in. He wouldn’t let me tell the other fighter he was blind,” said Giordano.

“The guy was twice David’s size. David beat him, and when the guy found out David couldn’t see, he cried.”

Jainchill lives alone in a one-room apartment. The walls are covered with plaques and awards he’s won in karate competitions over the years.

Two nights a week, Giordano picks him up and takes him to a North Miami Beach gym where Jainchill trains students of lesser degrees.

Jainchill still has one goal that eludes him.

“I’d like to have a little karate academy so I could help the handicapped--the blind--but I’m on Social Security and I don’t have the money.”

He is certain that karate training could help others.

“Look what it did for me,” he said. “I’m very together and very secure.”