Paralympians find growing field of competition

From The NY Times:

NEW DELHI, India — The English archer Danielle Brown has shot thousands of arrows in her career. But when the 22-year-old drew her compound bow and let one fly here Oct. 4 at the Commonwealth Games, she made history, becoming the first handicapped athlete to compete for England in an event for able-bodied athletes in the history of the Games.

Brown suffers from a condition called reflex sympathetic dystrophy, which results in chronic, debilitating pain in her feet. To compete, she shoots while sitting perched on a specially designed stool. She has an assistant collect her arrows from the target.

Brown’s achievement will soon be equaled by a fellow English athlete, track cyclist Sarah Storey, who was born without a left hand and will ride for England this week. Both women highlight a growing trend in which gifted handicapped athletes are moving from Paralympic sports to the highest levels of competition for the able-bodied.

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the South African swimmer Natalie Du Toit, whose left leg was amputated below the knee, qualified for the finals of the 10-kilometer open water race, the first disabled athlete ever to make it to an Olympic final in any sport. The Polish table tennis player Natalia Partyka, born without a right hand and forearm, also competed in the 2008 Summer Games.

But the integration of disabled athletes into sports for the able-bodied has not been without controversy. Oscar Pistorius, a South African double amputee, wanted to compete in the Beijing Olympics as a sprinter, but was barred from participating by the International Association of Athletics Federation, which ruled that his specially curved prosthetic running blades would give him an unfair mechanical advantage.

In the case of Brown and Storey, there have been no objections to the minor adjustments that enable them to compete against able-bodied athletes. Storey’s bicycle has been modified so that she can change gears and brake using only her right hand and so that she can balance while starting out of the saddle.

This is the first time Brown, who won gold in the 2008 Beijing Paralympics and is the current international Paralympic world champion, has shot against an able-bodied international field, but she has faced able-bodied archers before.

“In Britain, there is no domestic disabled competitions, so domestically, I am always competing with able-bodied guys anyway,” she said. “I don’t see myself as different than anyone else.”

She competed in hill-running races before she was diagnosed with her condition and had to give running up at age 13. She began looking for another sport that was not as tough on her feet and hit upon archery. As her condition grew worse, she had to rely on a wheelchair to get around and began sitting on a stool while shooting.

Brown said that her handicap had perhaps given her a psychological advantage. “With my disability, I’ve had to be mentally strong,” she said, noting that just the simple process of getting out bed in the morning is often excruciating. “I have just had to put that to one side, and I guess in a sporting sense that also helps me because I’ve had to develop strategies to cope.”

Storey, a 32-year-old cyclist, began her career as a swimmer, competing with able-bodied athletes until she was picked for the British team for the 1992 Paralympics. There she won two golds, three silvers and a bronze. And she went on to win five more Paralympic swimming golds, five more silvers and two more bronzes. But repeated ear infections after the Athens Paralympics temporarily drove her from the pool and prompted her to take up cycling in 2005. Storey quickly proved as formidable on a bike as she had been in the water.

It was through cycling that Storey met her husband, Barney Storey, who serves as a pilot for blind Paralympic riders. He helped coach his wife to the top of the Paralympic field. In Beijing, Storey blew away the competition, winning the Paralympic gold in the individual pursuit with a time – 3:36 – that was more than 34 seconds faster than that of her nearest disabled competitor and that would have put her in eighth place in the Olympics.

Both Brown and Storey, who have been at the pinnacle of their sports in Paralympics, said competing in the able-bodied portion of the Commonwealth Games was about finding new personal challenges. “It was not a conscious decision to be an able-bodied athlete, it was a conscious decision to look for the best competition opportunities,” Storey said. She also said that back in Britain, only one other female Paralympic rider is classified in the same bracket as she is, which makes for dull competition.

Storey said that while going from the Paralympics to able-bodied competition had taken her from being a favorite to being an underdog, it also had made her a target. “No one wants to get beaten by anyone with one hand,” she said.

And Brown acknowledged that while she never thought of herself as a trailblazer for other disabled athletes, the media seemed to be focused on her for that reason. “I never thought of myself in that kind of role, but I suppose it is great that people are breaking through the boundaries,” she said.

Brown almost decided to skip the shoot that has given her with an opportunity to make history. She was attending a Paralympic training event in Arizona when she learned she had qualified for Commonwealth Games selection trials for England, which were taking place in just five days. Brown, who was also about to take her law school final exams, thought she would not be ready to compete and worried that she had taken too much time away from her studies. But her boyfriend, the English Paralympic power lifter Ali Jawad, convinced her it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, especially since archery will not be featured in the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

“I think because I wasn’t under any pressure, I thought, you know, I’m jet-lagged, I’m not going to do well, I really can’t be bothered, and, for some reason, I just shot really, really well,” she said.

Coming off the field in her wheelchair after the qualifying round Monday – in which she finished 14th in a pool of 32 with a score of 676 —Brown said she was disappointed with her performance. “I didn’t shoot as well as I could do,” she said. “My arrows were going all over the place.” On Tuesday, Brown outshot Amanda McGregor of New Zealand to advance to the individual quarterfinals Saturday. On Wednesday, the English women’s compound archery team, which Brown is a member of, beat New Zealand to advance to the semifinals.