Breaking records, smashing perceptions

ATHLETICS PARALYMPIC GAMES:Ireland's Paralympic athletes head to London with a target of five medals, three of them gold. And that's just for starters, writes MALACHY CLERKIN

AT THE Paralympic Games, everybody has a story. Seán Baldwin was 36 years old when the Land Rover carrying him and fellow army ranger Derek Mooney careered off a bric-a-brac road 40 kilometres south of the Liberian capital Monrovia. Mooney died in the accident, just a fortnight after getting engaged at the age of 33. Baldwin smashed his skull, his shoulder blades, his ribs and his pelvis.

In order to stabilise him for the air ambulance home, medics had to amputate his right leg just below the knee. His lung collapsed and he was on a ventilator for six weeks, by which time a flesh-eating disease had attacked his leg so badly that they had to amputate again, this time above the knee. This all happened nine years ago.

Pádraic Moran was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at 13 months and has spent most of his 27 years in and out of a wheelchair and up and down off crutches. Jason Smyth has travelled the world but never seen its wonders because Stargardt’s disease has left him with around 10 per cent of the visual facilities the rest of us can call upon. Philly Quinlan was a golfer, a rugby player and most of all a cricketer before a fall in 1999 put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his days. Everybody has a story at the Paralympics. Nobody has a sob story.

Nobody has time for them. Too busy getting on to be going back. Too caught up with the next race, the next game, the next session. Too concerned with hitting targets and justifying funding, living up to expectations and nailing down performances. They know you don’t look at them the same way you do able-bodied sportspeople and they’re fine with it. Watch them or don’t watch them, it’s entirely up to you. They have business to be getting down to.

Take a minute to look though and what you’ll see will keep you rooted to the spot. The one-legged high jumpers who clear heights Dick Fosbury never managed. The wheelchair tennis players who play a backhand with one hand while pivoting their chair for the return with the other. The wheelchair rugby players whose sheer bloodlust will make you shield a child’s eyes when you come across it. It may not all be sport as you know it but it won’t take long before you want to know more.

“People sometimes tend to get mixed up between Paralympics and Special Olympics,” says Liam Harbison, CEO of Paralympics Ireland. “They are two fundamentally different movements. Both great in their own right but fundamentally different. Paralympics is about being first, second and third, achieving season’s bests, personal bests, all that sort of thing.

“It’s about going there to perform at the highest level of an elite sport and it’s about there being consequences if you don’t. These guys are going out there to have their best ever performance – that’s what they’re aiming for, every one of them. They are going looking for personal bests and if it happens, great. If it doesn’t, there will be massive disappointment.”

As it happens, less than 12 hours after Harbison said those very words, Cathal MacCoille tied himself up in a hopeless knot on Morning Ireland, confusing Paralympics and Special Olympics. His apologies were swift and heartfelt but the timing couldn’t have been worse, right as the Irish squad was gathering in Departures at Dublin Airport on their way to Portugal for a pre-Games camp. For all the pre-publicity, for all the viral marketing that Channel 4 have done with their Superhumans campaign, even the best-intentioned minds can still slip. For Harbison, it goes with the territory. All he wants is for you to give it a go.

“The more people see it, the more recognisable it becomes. Very quickly, people realise that what they’re watching is real sport. They’re not watching a disabled person, they’re watching an elite athlete – someone who is finely-tuned, sports science-backed, funded, well-prepared, the whole lot.

“Now that person happens to have some form of functional impairment and the first time you go to see them perform, that will be what you notice initially. But I guarantee you that inside the first hour, you will forget all about it and you will be glued to the sport.

“I always say to people that they won’t get it until they see it live. But when you do, it does grab you. There’s a different story behind every athlete – they all have overcome something to get where they are. Maybe they were born with a functional impairment, maybe they have had some sort of trauma along the way. And when you see what they do and what they’re capable of you will be amazed.”

Beginning on Thursday, a lot more people will be amazed than ever before. In a way, the Paralympics are coming home this year. They have their origins in Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, where Dr Ludwig Guttmann decided to hold an archery competition for World War II amputees during the 1948 Olympics. Fourteen ex-servicemen and two ex-servicewomen shot arrows from their wheelchairs on the lawn outside their hospital ward on the same day as the London Olympics opened. Guttmann was making a point, to the amputees and to the world – sport elevates just as it rehabilitates and nothing need get in the way of it. The ‘Para’ is short for parallel, by the by.

Those original 16 archers are the Adam’s rib of a movement that has grown beyond all imagination. By 1960, the Stoke Mandeville Games had become the Paralympic Games and 400 disabled athletes from 23 countries came to Rome to take part. As the decades rolled by, so the Games ballooned. From just incorporating people with spinal cord injuries originally, they grew to provide competition in six different categories – amputee, wheelchair, cerebral palsy, visually impaired, intellectual disability and Les Autres (disabilities that don’t fall into any of the other five).

The numbers now are staggering. The 16 archers have morphed into over 4,200 athletes from 174 countries across 21 sports and 503 medal events. All but the scrapings of 2.4 million tickets have been sold as of this week, making these Games as near as dammit to being the first ever to sell out completely. The whole jamboree will be covered by over 6,500 journalists and broadcasters.

“It’s enormous now,” says Harbison.

“Even for Jacques Rogge to mention it in his speech at the closing ceremony was a sign of how much it has grown and is still growing. That was the first time that’s ever happened. Literally from five minutes into the closing ceremony, things went nuts for us. Our Twitter following went up by 50 per cent in the next three days. Requests into the website, media requests – it’s been non-stop since five past nine on that Sunday night.”

With more interest comes more attention. Their attitude is to say “bring it on”. Ireland are sending 49 athletes and Harbison is happy that the target they set after Beijing – five medals, three of them gold – will be met and bettered. In no fewer than 10 events the number one in the world going into competition will be wearing a shamrock on their vest/singlet/cap/blazer. Five medals should be delivered quite comfortably.

They don’t find themselves in this position by accident. Paralympics Ireland is funded to the tune of €1 million a year by the Irish Sports Council and few organisations use their stipend to better effect. As soon as the Irish Institute of Sport was up and running and properly focused in 2009, Paralympics Ireland were the ones knocking down the door.

Beijing taught them that they needed to improve in the areas of conditioning and athlete lifestyle and they pushed and probed away at Gary Keegan and his staff at the institute for their expertise. Both sides learned from each other along the way and the result is a team heading to London with bona fide stars of their chosen sport on the plane.

For a half an hour next Saturday night, there’s every chance the Olympic Stadium will belong to the Irish. When Jason Smyth’s 100 metres final goes off at eight o’clock, the 24-year-old sprinter from Derry will stun a crowd that almost certainly won’t be expecting to see someone run as fast as he can. If Michael McKillop follows up by retaining his 800 metres title 30 minutes later, the roof might come off the place. Even Katie Taylor didn’t get to show off in front of 80,000 people.

Ireland’s other medals should come from the field, where Orla Barry is the reigning European champion in her discus category and Catherine O’Neill won a discus gold and a club silver last year at the World Championships. Gay Shelly has a Boccia bronze from Beijing to build on and young Gorey swimmer Darragh McDonald took bronze last year in the 400m freestyle at the European Championships.

It’s the cyclists though who carry some of the strongest hopes. Colin Lynch (paracycling) and Mark Rohan (handcycling) are reigning world champions, as are the tandem pair Catherine Walsh and Fran Meehan. Flag-bearer at the opening ceremony, Cathal Miller, has been inching towards the podium in major competitions year by year as well.

And as for Seán Baldwin, he’s still in the army and these days he’s a logistics man. He goes to London as a shooter, the first ever Paralympic target shooter Ireland has sent. The competition is hot though.

“I guarantee you a world record will be needed to get into the final,” he says. “I could be there, have a great day, miss one target and not make the final. But that’s the standard you’re talking about here. No room for error.”

None of them have.

Nor would they want it.