Human Spirit Is Big Winner in Long Run

The Los Angeles Marathon is a medium-sized community on the move, population more than 15,000, elevation as high as the human spirit can aspire.

“Boston gears itself to an exclusive club of top runners,” a spokesman explained. “New York focuses on the international category. L.A. welcomes all comers. We’re in it for fun. We encourage people to come out and have fun.”

True. LAM3 (what else for the city that brought us GWTW and Rocky IV) offers a midway of running clowns, a juggler, a jogging waiter balancing a bottle of Dom Perignon and dueling human centipedes--one shod by Nike, the other equipped by Reebok.

But the marathon’s true moment, the hard drama, its sustaining purpose is the sense of wholeness it can give some who cannot see, many who cannot walk and a few whose lives have been endangered.

Moti Gurbaxani of Diamond Bar and Charles Pickens of Sepulveda are entered. They are survivors of multiple bypass surgeries. Manning Wein of Van Nuys is running. He’s 85.

Frank Genco of Covina will compete on one leg, a roller skate and crutches. Tony Fisch of Sherman Oaks, legally blind, will run. Sharlene Wills, totally blind, will walk alongside Sheba, her guide dog.

And there’s Scott Wagner, matchless in this and any other marathon. He lives in a Florida institution, has Down’s syndrome with all its physical anomalies.

Five years ago, Wagner, 37, of Miami, was physically unable to run 100 yards. Unable. But not incapable. Not according to another runner, psychologist David Nathanson.

“The perception has always been that these people (with Down’s syndrome) could not run distance at all and that was bothersome to me,” Nathanson said. “The Special Olympics, for example, as superb as it is, is limited to mentally retarded people and doesn’t have any distance running in it. I wanted to see if mentally retarded folk could be integrated into regular road races in ordinary communities.”

Nathanson, 43, went to Wagner’s facility. Five retarded adults were chosen to train and jog with Nathanson. All have become distance runners. But Wagner has soared.

His legs have gone from soft and stumbling to a set of young tree trunks “like Sebastian Coe.” His 10K times have dropped from an initial 80 minutes to 57 minutes and victory over “a substantial number of regular runners.”

Wagner ran his first marathon in 6 hours and 10 minutes, but in Los Angeles, Nathanson said, he is estimating “a sub-5-hour marathon, about 4 hours and 50 minutes.”

But that’s only part of the achievement.

“It has made a tremendous change in him socially,” Nathanson said. “His vocabulary has improved. He has been on television many times and has spoken to groups.

“I can’t say that his cognitive abilities have improved. But he is a much happier person. He has a focus in life now that extends beyond the institutions.”

Nathanson, a professor at the Florida International University, said he receives no payment for running and working with Wagner. No formal experiment is involved. “I do this only as a friend,” Nathanson added. “I do it because I was troubled by the notion of these people being on display.”

Wagner, he believes, is rising as a role model against exhibition.

“It is absurd to think that all children with Down’s syndrome will become marathon runners,” he said. “But there’s a helluva difference between allowing Down’s kids to become fit enough to where they can participate in 1- or 2- or 3-mile runs . . . as opposed to the state of the art where we see slow motion shots of a cute little Down’s syndrome child doing 50 yards or 100 yards and we say: ‘Isn’t that wonderful.’

“It is wonderful. But it really doesn’t take any training to run 100 yards. The question is: ‘Are these Down’s syndrome folks and other mentally handicapped people capable of more than we think?

“Or is it our own perceptions of their quote, disability, unquote that is holding them back? “