Gaskin Is Not Running Impaired, Either : Pan Am Games: Deaf quarter-miler waits until others start, then he catches them.

When one tries to take the politically correct course of calling Wendell Gaskin hearing impaired, it is he who does the correcting. “I am deaf,” he said. “Deaf since I was born.”

Perhaps he makes an issue of it because he does not consider himself impaired in his immediate pursuit, to become the world’s fastest quarter-miler.

“Everybody knows Michael Johnson,” he said before a workout here at the Municipal Track, where he will run in today’s 400-meter semifinals at the Pan American Games, his first international meet as a senior athlete. “He’s the best in the world. I’m not ready for that. But I want to put my name up there.”

So far, he has put his name at the head of the list for hearing-impaired runners in the 100, 200 and 400 meters. But as much as one might attempt to congratulate him for his achievements, he says he is disappointed that he has run the 400 no faster than 45.29 seconds. That time, the world’s 26th-fastest last year and two seconds slower than Butch Reynolds’ world record, came during the semifinals of the national championships, in which he ultimately finished fifth.

“That was last year,” Gaskin said. “Now is this year.”

One of his training partners in Raleigh, N.C., Antonio Pettigrew, the 1991 world 400-meter champion, said Gaskin could run as fast as 44.5 before the end of this summer.

His coach, Trevor Graham, said Gaskin, 22, is capable of running under 44 seconds before he finishes his career.

“When he came to Raleigh, he didn’t know how to sprint,” Graham said. “He just ran naturally. I had to walk him around the track to show him how to do it. At first, he was embarrassed. But I told him: ‘Don’t worry about anybody else. I’m going to be here for you.’ He’s a smart guy. He learns very fast.”

As Gaskin sat down to talk with reporters here, he asked for help from an official of USA Track & Field. She did not know how to sign, but with questions filtered through her, he had to read the lips of only one person instead of several before answering in short, labored sentences.

Gaskin, who, Graham said, hears no sounds without a hearing aid, said he would rather sign, but he is accustomed to living in a hearing world, having gone to no special schools while growing up in Edwardsville, Kan.

If he ever felt disadvantaged, that disappeared after he discovered when he was 8, during an elementary school field day, that he was the fastest person in his class. From that point on, he competed in as many sports as he could, lettering in high school in basketball, football and track. He said his lack of hearing was not even a handicap in football huddles. He read the lips of the quarterback, who said a color for each of the routes Gaskin was supposed to run as a wide receiver.

Neither was the fact that he could not hear the track starter’s gun much of a problem in high school because he was fast enough to compensate for slow starts. He would wait until he saw the other runners start before he did, then pass them.

That also worked in junior college at Johnson County, Kan., where he won the national championship in the 400. Other runners, believing they needed an edge against him, sometimes would flinch in the blocks, hoping that he would react to them and false start. But he never did.

“I would just look at them and say, ‘Try again,’ ” he said.

It was not until he enrolled at Kansas State that his lack of technique on the track and difficulties in the classroom, which he said were caused by an undependable translator, caught up with him. When Graham, a Kansas State assistant coach, moved to Raleigh, Gaskin went with him.

They work repeatedly on his starts, although the approach is not too technical.

“He stands by me and says, ‘Boo!’ ” Gaskin said.

If Graham says it loudly enough, Gaskin reacts to the vibration he feels. In races, however, he still falls back on watching the other runners.

“When they get out, I get out,” Gaskin said, adding that he believes he loses as much as eight-tenths of a second at the start to his competitors. “In the 100 and 200, that’s too hard. But in the 400, I just catch up.”

He dedicates his races to his mother, Ledora, who died when he was 5. While speaking of her, he lowered his shirt collar to show reporters the gold necklace he wears with her name on it.

But he said he also wants to compete well as an inspiration for others with hearing impairments.

“Deaf people think they can’t beat hearing people,” he said. “They think they’re slow. You just have to run fast.”

Graham told the other runners when Gaskin arrived in Raleigh to treat him as they would any other quarter-miler. Graham also told them to be careful what they said about Gaskin because he can read lips from 60 yards away.

“I decided to test him one day,” Pettigrew said. “I was standing about 40 meters away, and I said, ‘Wendell, you’re jiving around; you’ve got to run harder or I’m going to work you over.’

“He came running up to me and said, ‘What’d you say?’ I said, ‘Wendell, I said you’re amazing, just amazing.’ ”