Athletes lead us by the hand to understanding

TICKING the boxes on the Healthy Athletes Programme questionnaire, respondents came upon an unusual query: do you chew tobacco?

A mistake surely. How many athletes are likely to chew tobacco before big events, or take to bed after a contest with a glass of warm milk and a plug of dried leaves for comfort?

The volunteer collecting the answers in a worldwide survey of the health of Special Olympics athletes, their coaches, parents and guardians, was surprised that the question should be met by surprise.

Look around, she urged, smiling at a room full of the people, languages and cultures of Africa, Asia, South America countries that host town committees initially struggled to locate in an atlas or even spell correctly.

Including tobacco chewing as one of the possible naughties was as appropriate to some of the delegations as asking the Americans how often they dined in McDonalds.

It was a small point, but it revealed a greater understanding of Special Olympics than the average outsider would garner in a lifetime without such an event.

Special Olympics this week brought the outsider into a world full of small wonders. The six-inch long jump became the most fantastic flight of freedom, power and achievement.

Six inches forward from an athlete whom society would previously only have seen as backward. For the athlete whose whole mind and soul fought to control a body that defied instruction, it represented a massive personal triumph.

For a spectator just beginning to appreciate the significance, it was the first small step in a journey towards understanding.

The coach of the wheelchair athlete whose solo race against the clock was delayed by a minor quibble from the event adjudicator over the placement of marking cones bit his lip in anxiety as he watched his star performer resume his starting position.

For this athlete, with legs that refused to work and arms that were disobedience personified, the minutiae of preparation meant everything, and a delay when he was all ready to go could be disastrous.

He needed to keep working his arms, his coach explained, running a finger along the muscles and tendons of his own lean limbs to show the importance of getting the balance right between keeping muscles loose but eager, fingers primed but flexible.

Seconds could make the difference between success now and having to try again some other time. The coach had an aching to run over and start massaging his athlete, who was in his thirties and had spent all his life getting to this point in tiny, slow increments of progress.

But he obeyed the rules and stayed his ground and gradually, after the starter's pistol fired, his anxious lips broke into a smile

Progress by years and inches came back to the elderly woman resting on a bench under the blazing sun in the grounds of the RDS gymnastics venue, as she looked out on the green where children were playing while parents laid out picnics.

One of the founders of one of the country's first training centres for people with learning disabilities or retardation or mental handicap as it would have been called back then in the 1960s she recalled a time when all they had was a bare green site and a dream of doing something for their special children.

It took ages to get the site, eventually they got a mobile home and gradually, bit by bit, they garnered the support and strength to create what is now the superb John of God's Centre in Islandbridge, Dublin.

Her own son, in a ground-breaking move for the integration of people with learning disabilities, was taken on by an uncertain McDonald's outlet for a six-month trial period to see if he could manage to hold down a job.

That was nine years ago, and he remains their most productive employee.

"It took time," was as far as his mother would go in complaining about the battle she, her son and the other parents and families fought day by day for understanding and respect during those difficult early years.

"We started small."

A small change in perception is all Special Olympics president Timothy Shriver wants from the public at large which, he fears, too often sees people with learning disabilities as different, remote and unable.

"If instead they see them as sprinters or marathon runners and a joyful member of a family, they'll think you know that's the kind of person I'd like my child to be friends with," he said, describing the minor adjustments in attitude necessary to make a world of difference.

And yet despite the small wonders, everything about Special Olympics World Summer Games 2003 resonated big and bold and powerful. Minutes, seconds, inches, medals, ribbons, smiles, hugs. Small things that made for a big week. The memories will live large for a long time.