by josie
Amanda McGrory, 26, plans to have a long career as a professional athlete.
When 26-year-old U.S. champion wheelchair racer Amanda McGrory looks into her past, she doesn’t see the transverse myelitis that inflamed her spinal cord at age 5. She sees dedication, an active, happy life, and a solid handful of medals and awards. When she looks into her future, she doesn’t see retirement. She sees years of competition.
That’s a striking difference between the Olympics and the Paralympics. With the former, a 38-year-old athlete is remarkable enough to get news coverage. With the former, a 42-year-old athlete is just another member of the team.
Athletes with a range of disabilities compete in the Paralympics, which started as therapy for wheelchair-bound World War II military vets at a British hospital. The games are in progress through Sept. 9 in London, the recent host to the 2012 summer Olympics. Since 1948, the Paralympic Games have become second only to the Olympics in terms of number of athletes competing from around the world.
Wheelchair racers tend to peak in their 30s — and they’re neither lonely nor the oldest in the Paralympics. McGrory says of wheelchair racing, “I think because it’s such a technical sport and so fitness-based, that especially for people who get into it later — everything doesn’t ‘click’ until they’re older.”
Kari Miller, a 35-year-old sitting volleyball medalist, says, “A lot of injuries happen later in life, so people like me aren’t even introduced to adaptive sport until later in life.” In 1999, Miller lost her legs to a drunk driver. Now, she spends her life playing competitive sports. She is in London to win the gold.
Compare that with the youth-fest that was the Olympics, and it gives me hope. Bodies are bodies. If Paralympic athlete can be healthy into her 30s or 40s, or even older, then so can the rest of us.
One story told again and again at the Paralympics: I started doing this as part of rehab, and then …
But why should it take an accident or illness to get me to rewrite my body? I can call now time for rehab, and change the way I use my body and approach new sports.
Whatever your age or condition, there’s no better place to find inspiration than the Paralympics, and those athletes don’t compete only during Olympic years. Events are held all over the world — all over America, in every state and many cities — every year.
I have a few heroes in different sports, from different countries. A few of them are in the Canadian wheelchair basketball team. Elaine Allard and Janet McLachlan, both 35; Kendra Ohama, 47, and Tracey Ferguson, 38, have so much power and grace that NBA players are boring in comparison. Watch them fly across the court. Watch them outmaneuver the competition. Watch them nail that curve from hand to basket, at astonishing angles and distances. Then tell me you aren’t tempted to find a pickup game.
A native New Yorker, I was never one for volleyball. It’s a game I associate with California surf movies — or it was. Seated volleyball has changed that. Miller plays defense with strength and energy that a teenager might envy.
April Holmes, “the world’s fastest amputee,” according to her website, will be 39 in November. She’s broken records in 100-, 200- and 400-meter races, and she just added a bronze medal to her collection for the 100-meter in London. And she’s showing no signs of slowing down.
British handcyclist Karen Darke was born in 1971. She became a paraplegic after a rock-climbing accident in 1993. Never mind not stopping her; it didn’t deter Darke’s active lifestyle (she missed the last Games because she’d damaged her skin during a month of sea-kayaking). Darke has a Ph.D. in geology — and she’s an author. Her 2006 book, If You Fall: It’s a New Beginning (John Hunt Publishing, 2006), is out in paperback and on the Kindle. The new one, Boundless (AKreative, 2012), is available on the Kindle. If she ever got bored, she could earn a living teaching time management.
In London, the Paralympic athletes don’t keep themselves in a cloister. Go to the nearest mall, and you’ll find them hanging out with teammates, families and friends. There are no bodyguards, like the ones surrounding self-proclaimed elite athletes. These people are as elite as it gets — honestly — and as approachable as people come. Of course, it helps if you can say “hello” and “good luck” in a dozen languages.
I even love what the Paralympics do for spectators. Forget flags — they cheer for every participant. Just like the players, viewers bring full hearts to the game. It may sound sappy, but it’s remarkable to feel that in the air. And then there’s the age thing. Pick your sport, choose your country, and you’ll find someone who’s proof of potential.
So McGrory will fly from October’s Oita International Wheelchair Marathon in Japan to November’s ING New York City Marathon until it becomes a tradition. I’ll watch the NYC marathons with a new eye. And while I may run slower than she can race in her chair, I plan to be right there in the game.
Who are your athletic heroes?
Photo credit: Dylan Coulter