Dockery continues to push boundaries

IAN O'RIORDAN ON ATHLETICS:You don't know the meaning of sporting dedication till you meet Patrice Dockery

THE OLD Belfield track on a cold and wet winter's evening is no place for the faint-hearted. If you fancy it, the only consolation is you'll probably have the place to yourself, which I thought I did one such evening a few years back, until I ran into Patrice Dockery.

Not literally, of course, as Dockery was training in her wheelchair, and I would surely have come out the worse off. She was travelling a lot quicker than I was. We'd spoken on the phone several times, and seeing her train alone that miserable evening in Belfield simply underlined what I already suspected. You don't know the meaning of dedication in sport until you know an athlete like Patrice Dockery.

We've spoken on the phone since, and more than anyone I know, Dockery portrays the essence and worth of Paralympic sport. This evening, she carries the Irish flag at the opening ceremony of the 13th Paralympic Games in Beijing, a more than fitting honour given it's her sixth successive Olympics.

No other Irish sportsperson can rival such Olympian status. She's never won a medal, yet incredibly, has finished fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth. At 37, she probably won't win a medal this time either, but if that was the only reason she got involved in athletics then she'd have given up years ago.

What drives Dockery is what drives every other elite athlete: obsession. It's what has driven her to compete in five world championships (winning silver in 1990) and also win the Dublin marathon.

She returns to her original distances in Beijing, the sprint track events, and while she claims this will be her last competition, I wouldn't bet on it.

It was Dockery who first explained to me the philosophy of Paralympic sport. The name derives from the Greek "para" ("beside" or "alongside") and thus refers to a parallel competition to the Olympic Games. No relation with paralysis or paraplegia is intended, and while there are five disability categories, intellectual disability is not one of them.

The intensity of the competition is on a par with the Olympic Games. Increasingly, the actual performances are on a par too, particularly South Africa's famous Paralympian Oscar Pistorius - aka the Blade Runner.

When Pistorius was 17 months old and his mother realised a double amputation from below the knee offered him the best chance of a relatively normal life she wrote him an open letter, finishing with the line: "A loser is not the one who runs last in the race. It's the one who sits and watches and who has never tried to run."

Pistorius' mother encouraged him to participate in a range of sports and it was only when he injured his knee playing rugby in early 2004 that he switched to athletes, and just eight months later, won gold in the 200 metres at the Athens Paralympics, aged just 17. His mother never got to witness it as she died two years previously.

So he next set himself the ambition of running in last month's Olympics, first by proving his carbon-fibre blades didn't offer him an unfair advantage, and then by chasing the 400 metres qualifying time of 45.55 seconds. His got down to 46.25, finishing third at the South Africa championships. "I'll just have to redouble my efforts to make sure I qualify for London in 2012," he announced.

Pistorius has entered three events in Beijing - the 100, 200 and 400 metres - and more than any other athlete he can raise the profile of the Paralympics.

It's a role he's taking very seriously, so much so that he surprised a lot of people earlier this week with harsh criticism of South Africa's preparations for Beijing, including the fact that their Olympic officials flew out business class, while the athletes, despite their disability, were back in the economy class. He also labelled the team outfits for the opening ceremony "an embarrassment". He's serious about the sport because he wants the sport to be taken seriously.

South Africa also boasts the second most famous Paralympian in swimmer Natalie du Toit. She carries their flag in this evening's opening ceremony, as she did inside the Bird's Nest a few weeks ago. Despite losing a leg in a motor accident in 2001, she qualified for the 10km open water swim at the Olympics, finishing 16th, the first Paralympic athlete to contest an able-bodied swimming final.

This time, du Toit competes in five events, with a chance of winning all five. Like Pistorius and Dockery she's continually breaking barriers and setting new standards and closing the gap between Olympic and Paralympic sport, and what a wonderful thing that is.