COVER STORY : He’s Swell on Wheels! : Gerard Moreno and Other Disabled Athletes Benefit From Innovative Wheelchair Designs

Off-road wheelchair racer Gerard Moreno launches himself off the starting ramp like a man possessed.

Within seconds the West Los Angeles man is bouncing along the hard-pack mountain trail, careering around turns and plunging down a two-mile obstacle course of blind curves, cliffs, rocks, foot-deep ruts, switchbacks and loose dirt.

Roughly six minutes later, at an altitude 1,200 feet lower, he hurtles across the finish line, thrilled by another successful practice run and an improved time.

The 37-year-old Moreno, who was paralyzed below the rib cage in a 1981 gunshot incident, recently put such practice to use, finishing second in the National Off-Road Bicycling Assn.’s wheelchair division championship. The event was held Aug. 2-28 at the Snow Summit Ski Area in the San Bernardino Mountains.

For Moreno, the sport rivals no other.

“It’s almost surrealistic, like you’re in a dream world,” he said. “You’re rattling around, flying out of your seat, trying to steer and your hands are numb from holding on. The wind is whistling through your helmet and your heart is pounding. It can get hairy when you’re heading for a turn, and your brakes lock up when you hit some loose terrain. Sometimes I don’t know if my butt is sliding because I can’t feel the seat.”

Moreno is part of a new breed of wheelchair athletes--multi-sport competitors who have been liberated by innovative wheelchair designs. Wheelchair riders once encumbered by unwieldy, heavy equipment now use lighter, more versatile contraptions to master such sports as skiing, tennis, basketball, fencing, karate, rugby--and off-road racing.

The new equipment has allowed Moreno to recapture some of the thrills he knew in his other life--the life he had before Oct. 24, 1981.

On that night, while he was in the rear of his parents’ Rancho Park home with his girlfriend, two men came to the back door saying they were police officers. Upon entry, one man stuck a gun in Moreno’s face, while the other ransacked the house.

As the gunman tried to rip the jewelry off his girlfriend’s neck, the family dog charged.

“I thought the gunman was strangling my girlfriend and that he was about to shoot the dog,” Moreno said. “It just set me off.”

The gunman’s weapon jammed and both assailants fled. As Moreno chased them from the house, the man with the gun turned and fired. A .22-caliber bullet entered the left side of Moreno’s torso, shattering a vertebra and blowing away half his left lung.

Moreno immediately lost feeling in his legs and subsequently passed out. He awoke in the hospital the next day, with tubes in his mouth, nose and beneath his rib cage. Intravenous tubes dangled from his arms.

Three operations later, Moreno hit bottom. Efforts to repair nerve damage to his spinal cord were unsuccessful. He was paralyzed from the rib cage down.

Months of numbing rehabilitative therapy followed, during which Moreno had to rely on others to teach him the basics: dressing, cooking, bathing and going to the bathroom. He was fitted with a colostomy bag for excretions and a catheter to drain urine into another bag.

It was quite a comedown for Moreno, who, before his injury, had played on the Beverly Hills High School football team and competed as a pole-vaulter at Cal State Los Angeles.

“I was overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness--especially being with other people who knew me as an athlete and an independent person,” he said. “But when I saw some of the quadriplegics down the hall, I realized how blessed I was--I still had my mind and arms. I was determined to become self-sufficient.”

Many psychologists say the pace of recovery for patients with traumatic spinal injuries can rely on such variables as personality, health insurance coverage, and a loyal support network of friends and family.

“The psychological impact is tremendous--one’s life is in ruins,” said Dr. Olga Stehlik, a rehabilitative specialist who treated Moreno while he was at the Northridge Hospital Medical Center. “You need guts and strength to convince yourself that you can have a life without walking. Gerard was a fighter who never gave up. He was always cooperative and enthusiastic about learning how to move around.”

Those paralyzed with spinal injuries must cope with cramping, muscle spasms, bed sores, loss of bowel control and chronic urinary tract and rectal infections for months, if not years. Friends sometimes disappear. Families can split apart over trying to provide round-the-clock care.

For some, the most difficult moment comes when they leave the hospital.

“Many go through a major identity crisis over who they are,” said Dr. Sandra Rudnick, a rehabilitative psychologist who runs a weekly support group for quadriplegics and paraplegics at the Northridge Hospital Medical Center. “First, they are in this rehabilitative womb-like environment for months and then are thrust back into the world where they had previously been ambulatory.”

The disabled must then cope with sundry tasks of daily life that others perform effortlessly: grocery shopping, taking a shower, traveling to appointments.

Rudnick said most patients go through a major depression, the result of grieving over the loss of what they consider to be their former selves. Many have long bouts of anger. But eventually, as their pain decreases and they regain their ability to function, many patients finally accept their situation.

Psychologists marvel at those who can return to and excel in their previous environments, much less take up off-road wheelchair racing.

“These are remarkable people with exceptional drive and tenacity who are at the very top of our population,” Rudnick said. “They are almost like Olympic athletes as compared to the rest of us. They are people who take risks and see in their injuries a challenge that will not defeat them.”

By all accounts, Moreno, whose youthful looks and energy belie his 37 years, has rebuilt his life.

He lives in a comfortable two-bedroom house in West Los Angeles with all the trappings of the good life: a Jacuzzi, a motorboat in the back (yes, he goes boating too), three cats and a dog. The only notable signs of his disability are the ramps affixed to the front and back steps and the special handles in the shower and bathtub.

There will be no keeping Moreno away from his 20th-year Beverly Hills High School class reunion, scheduled for this Saturday.

Five years ago Moreno founded his own computer consultant company, Intelligent Software Systems, which advises businesses about accounting programs. A client, Bill Barlow, owner of Cycle Products West, a West Los Angeles motorcycle parts and accessory store, said Moreno has become an indispensable part of his business.

“Paperwork is my weak area and he came in and computerized my accounting system, which leaves me free to do my other work,” Barlow said. “He’s really a computer whiz and I wouldn’t be in business without him. I would have run screaming from my building if I had to deal with (government paperwork).”

Moreno’s girlfriend of four years and current live-in, Carol, said that when she first met Moreno, she was never conscious of the wheelchair--and still isn’t.

“There are so many people who are not physically disabled but have lots of emotional problems,” she said. “Gerard is incredibly balanced and is not really handicapped. We’ll go out and I’ll often forget until we come to some stairs or an escalator. Those are his only obstacles.”

In the summer, Moreno spends much of his time traveling to various locales to compete against his fellow wheelchair racers and other mountain bikers.

His vehicle is the Enduro All Terrain Chair (ATC), and he is a member of the racing team sponsored by the chair’s manufacturer--Connecticut-based Wheel Ring Inc.

The chair resembles a contraption NASA might have created for lunar exploration. Its titanium frame rests on four heavy-tread tires similar to those used on mountain bikes. Like a regular wheelchair, there are two large wheels in the back and two smaller ones in the front. But the 52-pound vehicle also features dual front suspension forks, alloy headsets, an adjustable seat and back, and independent rear drum brakes. It also comes with a special steering mechanism and a multi-position rear axle plate.

Over the last year, Wheel Ring has sponsored Moreno and the ATC Enduro racing team’s five other members in 10 downhill races, held in Lake Tahoe and in Colorado, Utah and as far away as Kentucky.

Many of the disabled competitors also compete in slalom and cross-country races, but the downhill remains their favorite event. Gravity provides the speed, and heading downhill avoids the need for the constant pushing required in cross-country events and the repetitive sharp turns of the slalom.

Moreno and his fellow competitors are tanned, with muscular chests and Popeye forearms. On a recent day, during a series of practice runs, a group of them took a breather in the Snow Summit parking area before heading back up the chairlifts.

Matt Feeney, 31, Moreno’s chief competitor and the only one in the group who is a fellow Enduro team member, is a world-class disabled ski racer. He was paralyzed in a 1988 cliff-diving accident when a vertebra snapped as he hit the water. The others gathered in the parking lot were Tom Ell, 45, a Long Beach resident who became a paraplegic 15 years ago while racing in a Motocross competition, and Juan Desales, 29, who contracted a blood disease as a teen-ager and lost both legs beneath the knee to gangrene. Desales, a newcomer to the sport, was contemplating a first run down the mountain.

There was an easy camaraderie as the wheelchair athletes traded stories and quips. At one point Feeney suggested that the best way to stop the fast-improving Moreno was to let the air out of his tires.

They tell of taking breathtaking tumbles, or “turtling,” and not knowing if they had suffered any injuries. One time, Moreno did an “endo”--a head over heels flip off a hay-bale jump. Race officials ran up and gave him a quick look, propped him in his chair and sent him on his way.

“If someone had (said) four or five years ago that we would be going down these courses this fast, no one would have believed it,” said Moreno, who has hit speeds of nearly 50 m.p.h. on his special rig.

But, as with any competitive spirit, Moreno still has his frustrations. Despite the success of his recent second-place finish at the Snow Summit downhill races, he was upset at the scheduling of his wheelchair division.

Their race was the last of the competition at the end of the day. The audience had drifted away and the trail was riven with deep ruts from the hundreds of previous bicycle runs. An added insult was that Moreno caught up with a bicyclist from a previous race and was unable to pass because of the narrow trail, which slowed his time.

Brian Stickle, director of competition at NORBA, said his organization meant no harm.

“The scheduling was a lack of knowledge on our part,” he said. “We didn’t realize how fast (the wheelchair racers) were going. Hopefully, we can run them in the middle of the day in the future.”

A more serious disappointment came a month ago. Wheel Ring had custom-made two enhanced ATC prototypes worth $5,000 each for Moreno and a friend. The two prized chairs were stolen while chained to the back of a pickup parked at the friend’s house in Venice.

Despite the recent setbacks, Moreno is always planning for the future. He hopes to go soon on a kayaking, water-skiing and para-sailing trip. And there are always new mountains to traverse in his off-road racing career.

“My goal is to run neck and neck with the expert downhill bikers,” he said. “We could also use more disabled people out here. . . . They’re missing out on the thrill of their lives.”