Special Olympics Show Victory Over a ‘Little Inconvenience’ : Sports: Contestants say the chance to display the abilities of the mentally retarded is more important than winning a gold medal.

There were a lot of backslaps and hugs as the victorious softball team from Sacramento came off the field Saturday, their place in today’s championship finals guaranteed.

“We sure are having a good time,” said catcher Joey Swiencki, 28, surrounded by his teammates after they beat Marin County 9-0. “Now we want to win the gold medal.”

Bringing home the gold does not really matter, Swiencki and his teammates said. They had spent the afternoon at the UCLA intramural field participating in the annual Summer Games of the California Special Olympics and they were making friends and having a good time in the sunshine.

And they had made the point, they said, that people with mental retardation are fully capable of parking a softball over the left field fence or executing a complicated double play. Or as Santa Ana basketball player Joe Padilla, 29, put it, the Special Olympics are just as important for those watching the events as for those participating.

“We’re showing that it doesn’t matter, that if you keep yourself in shape and put your mind to it you can do anything you want,” said Padilla, a rangy center.

Among the outpourings of joyful celebration at the winners’ stand Saturday there were also scenes of disappointment. For every winner, there were some who lost. But all the participants seemed to come away smiling.

In 1968, Eunice Kennedy Shriver started the Special Olympics in her Washington back yard, as a day camp for people with mental retardation. On Saturday, daughter Maria Shriver and her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, helped preside over an event that drew more than 2,000 athletes from throughout California to compete in an array of Olympic-type sporting events. They included track and field, tennis, gymnastics, swimming, basketball, bowling, and for the first time, competitive cycling.

Sports clinics also were presented by professional athletes and celebrities, and there was a dance hall, carnival games and massage tent for participants to unwind and socialize between events.

The games began Friday night at UCLA’s Drake Stadium amid the pageantry of opening ceremonies and the culmination of a 1,000-mile Olympic-style torch run. The games end today but sports programs are offered year-round because teaching the mentally retarded to believe in themselves and their abilities is a central theme of the Special Olympics.

Watching the athletes milling about, Paul Hoffman said he had always felt unwanted growing up mentally retarded, “like there wasn’t a place for me in this world.”

But participating for years in the Special Olympics built his confidence so much that the 34-year-old Fullerton resident was recently chosen the first official spokesman for the California games. Now, he said, he wants to give as much back to the organization as it has given to him so that others with the “little inconvenience” of mental retardation can benefit from the challenge of competing.

“It comes from the heart, what these athletes are doing,” Hoffman said. “Seeing someone who can barely walk across the finish line--it brings a tear to my face. Seeing them reach out and do the best they can, it touches my heart.”