An Olympic Dream Come True in Paralympics

For Karen Norris, the Olympic dream didn’t come into full focus until a seemingly innocuous piece of mail arrived at her home in Reseda.

It wasn’t enough that Norris had earned the unofficial title as the fastest disabled female swimmer in the country when she won eight gold medals at the National Summer Amputee Games in Atlanta this summer. Or that her parents had been busy making plans to go watch her compete in the Paralympics at Barcelona, starting this week.

Norris stared at the official USOC letterhead and read the organization’s code of conduct for the Games.

That’s when the reality finally struck, almost like a wave splashing her square in the face.

“The first statement in the code of conduct is: ‘You’re representing the United States of America,’ ” said Norris, who lost her left leg below the knee to a rare form of nerve cancer when she was 11.

“And something like, ‘You’ll bring honor to the country’ and this and that. I couldn’t even sit down when I was reading that.”

In effect, that piece of mail was tangible confirmation of a nearly lifelong goal, one going back all the way to her first tentative strokes in age-group swimming in Northern California when she was 7.

Now, 20 years later, the Olympics no longer will exist only in her imagination. Norris will compete in seven events--five individual and two relays at the Paralympics. The races range from Norris’ favorite, the 400 freestyle, on down to the 50 freestyle. She may swim in one other event, the 100 backstroke, but needs to wait for another spot to open in the qualifying heats.

The Paralympics have been around since 1960, when the Olympics were in Rome, and have been put on every Olympic year since then. They are held several weeks after the Olympics and closely mirror the Games.

For instance, Norris will live in the same Olympic village that Janet Evans and Summer Sanders occupied. She will march into the same Barcelona stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies.

There’s even a mascot for the Paralympics. Cobi, the ubiquitous mascot of the Olympics, has been replaced on billboards and soda cans by his gal pal, Petra, an armless cartoon character.

There are 15 sports in the Paralympics and athletes are classified according to the type and degree of their disability. And the U.S. disabled sports team is made up of athletes from five national disabled sports organizations, all members of the USOC. Norris, for example, belongs to the National Handicapped Sports (NHS).

That she even made the team for Barcelona is a bit of a surprise on more than one level. Although she has been active for years with the Far West Disabled Ski Team, she had never heard of the Paralympics.

Norris rediscovered swimming about a year ago, when she competed in a relay-triathlon with her sister, Meredith Johnson. Norris later was told about the Paralympics by her skiing coach. She started training and with fewer than 10 swimming workouts to her credit, won five gold medals at the Far West Regional Games in Cupertino. That qualified her--provisionally--for the Paralympics.

“They had never heard of me,” she said. “That’s why I had to qualify in Atlanta. I didn’t exist a year ago.”

Of course, that changed after the eight gold medals in Atlanta. And in three months, Norris dropped 15 seconds off her time in the 200 individual medley and swam a personal best of 3:02.4 in Atlanta, winning by more than two seconds. Norris is looking for the greatest improvement in the 400 freestyle because she has not competed in that event since early in the season, recording a time of 5:43.8.

“That’s so slow,” she said. “But it’s my favorite race because it’s a tactical one. Sprints are just all out.”

The pressure has been starting to build for Norris. And it’s even getting a little annoying.

“I’m pointing more for Atlanta in four years,” said Norris, who works at Xontech, a research and development company in Van Nuys.

“It will be nice to train (after Barcelona) without people saying every day, ‘How’s your training?’ I’m going to be happy when this is all over, going back to being a normal person with no pressure.”

Lately, Norris has been able to channel her nervous energy, visiting with a sports psychologist. She took that step in April after losing about eight pounds in a couple of days because of the excitement of competition.

Bud McAllister, who formerly coached Janet Evans, has helped Norris improve her times since she joined his club, Class Aquatics, this summer.

“The really ironic thing is that I swam for Class Aquatics 14 years ago, right after I lost my leg,” Norris said. “To be back swimming with them again after all these years is kind of funny. I’m swimming with 13-year-olds and they notice the difference right away. They don’t ask, ‘What’s wrong with your leg?’ They say, ‘How old are you?’ ”

Norris no longer compares herself to the swimmer she was at 9 or 10.

“I was very good before I lost my leg,” she said. “When I was 14, I still wasn’t swimming as fast as I had when I was 11. I was swimming against a ghost. I kept comparing myself to how I was before I lost my leg and that’s very frustrating and discouraging. That wasn’t very fair to me.”

But Johnson frequently uses the word brave when she talks about her younger sister. Johnson has watched Karen take on the toughest ski runs and jump into the ice-cold ocean waters at triathlons. Almost nothing Norris accomplishes surprises her anymore.

“It’s really weird,” Johnson said. “I don’t think anyone else in our family would have been mentally equipped to lose a leg. Yet Karen watched a videotape of her operation just a couple of days after it happened. And I said I can’t believe she did that.”

Norris said there were only a couple of days of tears after she lost her leg. Her parents didn’t dwell on the loss, which helped her quickly resume her life, despite a debilitating series of chemotherapy sessions.

There was never any question of what needed to be done, once the extent of cancer was diagnosed in her ankle.

“I agreed with it wholeheartedly,” Norris said. “When I think about people having cancer and they try, for instance, to replace the section of a bone . . . and, frankly, it gives me the heebie-jeebies when I hear about it. Get rid of it. When I hear about cancer, I say, ‘Get rid of it.’

“You can live without a leg. You can live without an arm. When I hear parents who say, ‘I don’t want my child to suffer on chemotherapy, I don’t want them treated,’ that’s murder. I call that murder. Or when I hear adults say, ‘I don’t want to endure chemotherapy, I’d rather die.’

“Then life means so little to you?

“I don’t think it was my experience with cancer or chemotherapy that gave me a zest for life. I hope I would have had it even if I had both my legs.”