Show by Disabled Athlete Gives Festival a Lift : Chuck Roedelbronn, at 5-2, 160, Puts On Exhibition With a Hoist of 440 Pounds

Chuck Roedelbronn appears possessed when he storms out on the stage, a King Lear on crutches.

“Cake,” he roars at an inanimate bench and a weight stand and bar straining with its 440-pound burden. “Easy.”

Seconds later, he is next to the bench and angrily hurls his wooden supports to the floor. Roedelbronn shimmies underneath his tormentor and then caresses the metal bar, first with his hands and then his lips.

“Mine,” he shouts. Then a one-word obscenity in Swedish. “Ready.”

The lift seems imminent. Indeed, the spectators attending the disabled weightlifting exhibition in the Centroplex Theater at Sports Festival VI are riveted by the performance, not only expecting Roedelbronn to lift the weight, but to push it through the ceiling.

But Roedelbronn wants the spectators to feel the weight, too. And for the moment, at least, to share his sense of urgency. Slowly, he raises the pitch of his breathing, exhaling in a gentle whoosh. Then total silence.

Slowly his hands tighten around the bar, and the weight is hoisted into the air. The judges signify a good lift. Roedelbronn salutes the cheering crowd, grabs his crutches and stalks off.

“Chuck is extremely intense when he’s out there,” said Coach Paul DePace of the National Wheelchair Athletic Assn. “Weightlifting is very mental, very psychological. Chuck needs to get angry at the bar, to almost hate it.

“But think about what you just saw. A man 5-2 and 160 pounds lifted 440 pounds. I don’t care who it is, disabled, able-bodied, that’s a hell of a lot of weight.”

“That’s just how I approach the weight,” said Roedelbronn, who unlike his stage persona, is quiet, thoughtful and possesses a wry sense of humor. “Did you like the fall I took on the way out there the first time. Come to think of it, that was my best lift. Maybe I should fall every time.”

Roedelbronn, a 25-year-old from East Brunswick, N.J., has been lifting nearly three times his body weight since 1978, winning a world championship for the disabled in 1983. Last June, he won his eighth national championship.

In 51 competitions to date, Roedelbronn has won 43 and finished second in the other 8. He is the current world (disabled) record-holder with a bench press of 455 pounds. The world record for able-bodied men is 485.

But the records are insignificant when compared to his courage and intensity. For Roedelbronn suffers from spina bifida, a diffusion of the spine.

“I don’t have to cope with anything,” Roedelbronn said. “If I had been in an accident or something then I might have remembered how it was to walk or ice skate and feel bad about it.

“But spina bifida is a birth defect. Basically, my legs are paralyzed. The nerve endings are dead. Even if the doctors could reattach them, it wouldn’t do any good because the nerves are underdeveloped.”

Roedelbronn developed his massive upper body almost by necessity.

“When I was little we lived in North Bergen, just outside Jersey City,” he said. “That was a tough part of town. And kids are mean. They see visible differences and they single you out. So, I got beat up a lot.

“But at that time, I was a fat, little crybaby . . . now I’m a big crybaby.”

Roedelbronn’s parents, Charles and Doris, moved to East Brunswick when he was eight. He has always disdained a wheelchair so his arms began to get stronger. Then his father hit upon the idea of weightlifting.

“My dad was a pretty good athlete in high school,” he said. “He went to St. Michael’s in Union City, about the same time Tommy Heinsohn was there. He played football until he busted up his ribs.

“I can’t say enough for my parents. They always pushed me, wouldn’t let me be left out. So my dad got me lifting, and in the eighth grade I weighed about 127 and was benching 220.

“But I wasn’t going anywhere with it. You know I’d arm wrestle for lunches in high school and get fat because I was winning. I’m still murder on junk-food places.

“Then one day, I was upstairs in the wrestling room, and one of the wrestlers and I went at each other. I let him start on top, and he couldn’t break my arms down. So I grabbed him and rolled him over and pinned him.”

Roedelbronn was in the coaches’ office in minutes asking to be on the team. An artificial hip socket kept him out of the sport, but the coach did introduce Roedelbronn to the NWAA and Karl Faeth, the current trainer for the U.S. Olympic able-bodied lifters.

“I really began to enjoy the sport, and it made me want to achieve something,” said Roedelbronn, who works full time on a loading dock for a hardware store. “When you are growing up, you want to be able to deal with the opposite sex. To be macho. Well, it’s very hard to be macho on crutches. You are self-conscious.

“But the weightlifting gave me an identity. People respected me for what I could do. I didn’t worry about it. They treated me as an athlete. It’s nice to have people ask for a picture or an autograph. Or guys at the gym who ask for advice.”

Seeing a man on crutches or in a wheelchair creates an understandable sympathy. But DePace rejects the notion that these men are somehow inferior and are entitled only to a pat on the back rather than respect.

“For any athlete there has to be a natural ability to excel in any sport,” said DePace, who is confined to a wheelchair. “Then it comes down to hard work and dedication. These people aren’t asking for special treatment or favors. They want to be regarded as true athletes, who are out for records and love to compete against the best.

“Chuck didn’t get to be a lifter by accident.”

Forty disabled athletes were here for the Festival, including six weightlifters. In 1986, at Houston, 100 athletes are expected to be invited. In 1988, the Disabled Games will be held at Seoul, the site of the ’88 Olympic Games, the only difference being the time they are held. For Roedelbronn, however, the challenge is not winning gold, but striving for perfection. He wants to bench press 500 pounds and then ultimately head for the moon--a seemingly unattainable 600.

“You can probably count on the fingers of one hand, all the people who have lifted three times their body weight,” Roedelbronn said. “But I don’t look at what I do as awesome. I want to do 500 and then put the record so far out of reach that no one will touch it.

“I want to be remembered as a great lifter, one of the best.”That is the challenge. If you don’t challenge yourself, you cease to function.”

DePace doesn’t know if 600 is possible.

“Fimkin Lindbergh of Sweden weighs 280 and has lifted 606 pounds,” DePace said. “That is a lot of weight to move. But Chuck is so intense and is so dedicated that if anyone can do it, he can.”