D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August
2008
Breaking Away
When cyclists with disabilities get ready to roll in next month's Paralympics in Beijing, Silver City bike mechanic Todd Anderson will have their backs.
By Donna Clayton Lawder
Perched on the couch in his Silver City living room, Todd Anderson scrolls through his computer's photo files. He flashes on picture after picture, telling the stories behind the inspiring people on the screen.
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Todd Anderson will be taking his toolkit to Beijing. (Photo by Donna Clayton Lawder) |
One photo shows a strapping young man — a former Navy Seal, Anderson says, who was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident — now hand-powering on a three-wheeled "bike." The man is competing against a pair of men on two-wheeled racing bikes, both with prostheses. One lost his leg to cancer, Anderson explains; the other lost his leg in an avalanche.
In another frame are two men riding a tandem bike.
"The guy in the front is the 'pilot.' He's an able-bodied athlete," Anderson explains. "The guy in the rear is called the 'stoker.' He's the parathlete. He's visually impaired. The front guy is there to be his 'eyes,' but basically they both get up there in the saddle and pedal like hell. They're both powering the bike, of course."
The two men pictured on the tandem bike are riding along with — perhaps training with or competing against — two other cyclists. One is a hand amputee, her mechanical prosthetic lower arm attached to specially modified handlebars; the other is a knee-down amputee pedaling with a prosthetic leg.
Anderson relates the story of another athlete, who had been competing for a spot on the 1984 "regular" Olympic team, and suffered a life-altering head injury during a qualifying race. Though the accident ended her able-bodied athletic career, today she competes on the Paralympics cycling team.
Todd Anderson has these photos and knows these stories because, for a little over a year now, he has been employed by the US Olympic Committee, working as a mechanic supporting the Paralympic cycling team. This specialized job has brought him the opportunity to work with some of these determined athletes.
"I came on board just in time for the nationals in Colorado Springs," he says. "I do a lot of things. Working on the bikes, going to the training camps in Colorado, in Chula Vista (Calif.). I transport the riders and follow them in the car on training rides. Sometimes I run interference to protect the riders from traffic. Of course, I'm always doing maintenance and adjustments on the bikes."
And not just the bikes, apparently, as another photo he clicks on, captioned "Tightening Mike's arm," shows Anderson adjusting a screw in a parathlete's prosthetic arm.
"I have to procure parts for the bikes," he goes on. "In Europe (for the paralympic world trials in Bordeaux, France) I did a lot of packing and unpacking the bikes."
Soon Anderson will be getting himself packed — for a trip to Beijing, China — accompanying the team to next month's Paralympic Games, an Olympic competition for athletes with physical and/or sensorial disabilities.
The Greek root of the word "para" means "alongside," and in this case refers to a competition held in parallel with the "regular" Olympic games for able-bodied athletes. The word "Paralympics" is not intended to reference paralysis or paraplegia. The Paralympics are a competition for athletes from various disability groups: amputee, cerebral palsy, visual impairment, spinal cord injuries and "les autres" ("the others"), a group that includes all those that do not fit into the aforementioned groups. (Competition for athletes with intellectual disabilities currently is suspended — see box.)
The Paralympic Games will run just after this summer's Olympic games in Beijing, and will have their own separate opening and closing ceremonies, Anderson explains. The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, are an international multi-sport event that will be held in Beijing, People's Republic of China, August 8-24, followed by the 2008 Summer Paralympics from Sept. 6-17. Two years from now there will be a similar schedule with the Olympic winter games in Vancouver, Canada.
Spirit in Motion
According to the International Paralympic Committee's (IPC) Web site (www.paralympic.org), the movement toward an Olympic competition for athletes with disabilities began in 1948, when Sir Ludwig Guttmann organized a sports competition in England involving World War II veterans with spinal cord injuries. Four years later, competitors from the Netherlands joined the games — and an international movement was created. Olympic-style games for athletes with a disability — now called Paralympics — were organized for the first time in Rome in 1960. In Toronto in 1976, other disability groups were added and the idea of merging different disability groups for international sport competitions was born. In that same year, the first Paralympic Winter Games took place in Sweden. Today, the Paralympics are a competition for athletes from various disability groups. The re-inclusion of athletes with intellectual disabilities, suspended by the IPC in 2001 due to athlete eligibility issues with the International Sports Federation for Persons with an Intellectual Disability, is up for review after the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. The movement has grown dramatically since its first days. The number of athletes participating in Summer Paralympic Games has increased from 400 athletes from 23 countries in Rome in 1960 to 3,806 athletes from 136 countries in Athens in 2004. |
With the Paralympics imminent, Anderson's work-related travel has picked up dramatically this year, he says.
"Last year it wasn't nearly as much. But this year, well, there's the Olympics," he says with a laugh. He's been to the Chula Vista, Calif., training facility twice recently, for 10-day training camps. Another trip took him to Colorado Springs, Colo., for a solid month of preparatory camp for Paralympics team selections. The teams naturally chase the good weather, working out in Colorado in the spring and summer, Anderson explains, and in Chula Vista in winter.
"I love the travel," he says. "Seeing places, meeting new people. And traveling with the athletes adds an especially inspiring dynamic."
Of "the big trip" to Beijing in September, Anderson says, "I don't really know what to expect! I think it's going to be really incredible — mind-blowing, in fact." He adds that he's glad he won't have to drive in the land of the Great Wall. "I'm sure with the language barrier — I mean, I don't speak Chinese! — it would get pretty tricky with the street signs."
Working with the paralympic cycling team is an especially good fit for this athletic mechanic. Anderson has competed in numerous bike races himself, including the Tour of the Gila locally, as well as races in Montana and California.
"I've been messing around with bikes since I was a kid," Anderson says modestly. "I worked in some bike shops, and I had worked with Chad Contreras (the Paralympic cycling team's lead mechanic) and he threw my name into the hat."
To illustrate the wide variety of paralympic sports, Anderson pops a DVD into his player. On screen, a wheelchair-bound athlete tips off in an Olympic basketball competition — tipping over in his specialized chair — then immediately rights himself and fights the other similarly chaired parathletes for the ball. Another snippet in the film shows rugby, yet another an archery event.
"Yeah, it's pretty amazing to see a one-armed person shooting a bow and arrow, isn't it?" says Anderson.
Other clips show an armless woman competing in the Paralympics equestrian event, cuing her horse with her seated body language and special reins attached to her stirruped feet.
Anderson explains that while athletes with cerebral palsy have their own category, there are times when athletes with multiple disabilities compete against each other. This is illustrated poignantly in the movie's segment on the paralympic swimming competition. In one lane, an athlete paralyzed from the waist down hoists himself from a chair to the pool's edge, then into the water. Several lanes down is a swimmer who appears to be blind and who has another unidentified disability affecting his coordination. The starting gun fires, the racers are off, and it becomes apparent that two one-armed parathletes are competing in other lanes.
How, one wonders, do these athletes with such a range of disabilities and circumstances get matched up for competition — a competition that's, well, a fair measure of their abilities? How do the Paralympic Games avoid an "apples and oranges" scenario that might give one parathlete an advantage over another?
"It's not cut and dried," Anderson allows. "Doctors have to evaluate the athletes, determining things like how much mobility they have in their hands, if they're visually impaired and paralyzed, if they're an amputee. There are a lot of things that come into play."
On its Web site ((www.paralympic.org), the International Paralympic Committee says this process of classifying parathletes for competition is an ongoing process: "Since the 1960s, the development of sport for athletes with a disability has produced the development of classification systems; and this continues to evolve to the present day."
Asked what aspect of his work he finds particularly inspiring or noteworthy, Anderson tells the story of parathlete Sam Cavanaugh of Bozeman, Mont.
"Well, they're all inspiring," Anderson says of the parathletes, "but Sam stands out to me. For one thing, his injury was so recent." Anderson pauses to think back, calculating the years in his mind. "2005. Psychologically, the recovery after losing a limb takes time. The current wave of Iraq vets, for example. They're still processing it. And Sam lost not only his leg, but his friend in that accident."
Cavanaugh, Anderson explains, was injured in an avalanche. Finding himself buried to his waist in snow and in intense pain, his leg a mangled mess, Cavanaugh dug himself out and searched frantically for his friend, who was completely buried. Against all odds, Cavanaugh found and dug his friend out in just minutes, quickly enough that he should have been able to save his friend from being suffocated. But the other man evidently had died on impact, his neck broken by the deadly heavy mass of sliding snow.
"It must have been devastating for him," Anderson reflects. "It would have stopped most of us dead in our tracks to deal with something like that. But it didn't stop Sam."
Anderson tells what he knows of Cavanaugh's recovery from the man's doctor. Always an athletic guy, Cavanaugh became completely driven during his rehabilitation. His stump still an open wound, Cavanaugh pestered his doctor to fit him with a prosthesis in time for his birthday.
"He just kept at him: 'Doc, when am I going to get my leg?' Finally, the doctor gave in and said, 'Okay, Sam, you can have your leg for your birthday but you can only wear it for five minutes.' Amputees have to adjust to their prostheses," Anderson explains. "Later on, the doctor's out on the street and sees this amputee cyclist. He thinks to himself, 'I should go meet this guy so I can introduce him to Sam.' So, he goes up to the guy on the bike and it is Sam! He had somehow taped his prosthesis to his bike and was already out there cycling!"
Anderson laughs and shakes his head. "That's a guy you just can't keep down, an amazing guy."
Looking once again at his computer screen, Anderson pulls up his itinerary, noting that he leaves mid-August for preparatory camp in Colorado with the team. Just two weeks later, they all will set off for Beijing.
"Those are hard days for me," he says of the training camp. "I'm often up at 5 a.m. and sometimes I don't get to bed until 1 a.m." With the team having to make an 18-hour time adjustment in China, Anderson says they'll start modifying their habits as soon as they hit camp in Colorado. "Oh, we'll be sleeping all weird hours, eating at weird times to try to get adjusted before they have to compete. That's going to be a challenge."
He pauses and smiles, then adds, "But these are athletes who are used to challenge."