Achievements Worthy of Adulation

It wasn’t an entirely new experience, this adulation, this hero worship, that greeted Marla Runyan as she finished first in the women’s 800-meter run of the Paralympic heptathlon Thursday night. But it was new enough that she was overwhelmed.

At nearly midnight on a weeknight, the stadium was almost empty. But there were at least a dozen fans, crowding closer, asking for autographs, wanting to pose for pictures with the Californian generally recognized as the Paralympic world’s premier track and field athlete.

Because she is legally blind, the San Diego State graduate leaned in, looking hard for blank spaces to sign her name. She stayed as long as the fans wanted, chatting, accepting hugs, congratulations.

Runyan set a world record for points won in the Paralympic heptathlon before she had even begun the fifth and final event, the 800 meters, which she dominated from the start. On Friday night, she accepted her gold medal--and more adulation from cheering fans.

“It was great,” she said of the experience with autograph seekers. “That’s never happened in the United States for me.”

It did happen once before. That was last year in Colorado Springs, Colo., when Runyan won a bronze medal in the heptathlon at the last Olympic Festival. But that was a competition for elite American athletes. Period.

The Paralympic Games generally do not draw the same kinds of crowds. People don’t recognize the achievements of the athletes who have overcome great odds to compete--athletes such as Ajibola Adeoye, a single-arm amputee runner from Nigeria whose winning time of 10.72 seconds in the men’s 100-meter dash in Barcelona was less than a second shy of the Olympic world record set last month.

Or Dennis Oehler of New York, who broke world records in Seoul in 1988 in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 400 meters wearing a prosthetic leg.

Or Trischa Zorn, the blind swimmer from Indianapolis who missed qualifying for the Olympic team by less than a second in 1980.

Or Runyan, who set an American heptathlon record in the 800 with a time of 2:04.17 during the Olympic trials in June. She came in 10th and thus failed to make the Olympic team. But she’s happy to be in Atlanta now, competing in the same stadium where Jackie Joyner-Kersee and the other Olympians competed last month.

Predictably, the crowds for the Paralympics, which began Aug. 15 and end today, are far sparser. But Runyan, 27, said that doesn’t bother her. Americans generally are less enthusiastic supporters of track and field events than are Europeans, she said. “Overall, I’ve been pretty impressed with the crowd turnout.”

Organizers, hoping to approach the record crowds that watched the Paralympics in Barcelona in 1992--when the event was free--originally predicted 1.3 million spectators would buy tickets to attend the Atlanta Paralympics. They now say they expect between 600,000 and 700,000.

But even with crowds smaller than expected, Runyan thinks it is good that the games are being held in their entirety in the United States for the first time and are getting some television coverage from CBS. In 1984, when the Olympic Games were held in Los Angeles, the Paralympics were split between New York and England.

The Paralympics have been in existence since 1960, usually held in the same city and shortly after the Olympics. But only now are disabled athletes starting to get the attention they deserve, she said.

“I think it’s important that people recognize the athletic achievement--that’s the kind of recognition we want. We don’t need charity recognition.”

She mentions the fawning local television reports on the games that the athletes laugh about at night for always including how “special” or “inspirational” the athletes are.

“We’re not special,” she said. “We’re just athletes.”

Just the other day, she said, some athletes were talking about how long it has been since a disabled athlete was featured on a box of Wheaties. It happened in the 1980s but not since, she said.

“I think it’s time for that if we really want to get a little more equality in the recognition,” she said.

Runyan’s vision began to decline when she was 9. A degeneration of her retina was the cause, and the decline stopped when she was 16. She is able to drive and see peripherally, and she acknowledges that--because she is used to her vision deficiencies--she believes it has no effect on her performance in sports such as the 800 meters.

But when she does the long jump, she said, she cannot see the jump board. She downplays the steps she must take to compensate.

“Every long jumper who’s any good measures the distance to the board,” she said.

One added pressure on her that athletes with good vision don’t have is that, in the middle of a long jump, she sometimes finds herself wondering if the coast is clear. What if there’s a rake in the sand pit?

At some of the more low-profile meets, she said, she has had to stop halfway to the jump board because she realized someone was still raking the sand.

While she is proud of her accomplishments--especially her making the Olympic trials against able-bodied athletes--she thinks the accomplishments of athletes with other types of disabilities are more undervalued.

Because wheelchair athletes do not compete in races against runners, she said, people do not recognize the superb athleticism required for their sports.

“Wheelchair athletes are not getting the recognition they deserve,” she said.

The Paralympics are billed as competition for elite athletes who happen to be disabled, but Runyan questions whether that is correct. The athletes competing range in age from the mid-teens to their 60s in some sports.

“These are only the 10th games,” she said. “So it’s really young.”

She trusts that as records keep falling, standards will get higher and it will become harder to qualify.

It also bothers her that the games are set up in such a way that athletes with different types of disabilities compete together in a way that she feels is unfair. For example, in Atlanta, a double-leg amputee competed--and lost--in the long jump against athletes who had disabilities such as a missing arm.

She understands the reason for it--there were not enough women with amputated legs competing.

“The answer is to recruit more disabled athletes to compete,” she said.