Mendoza Reaching for the Top

He was tired halfway through the race, but he heard the exhortations--”arriba, arriba mas fuerte”--and went faster and stronger and then there was a mile left, uphill and down, a flat spot and a left turn and then a right.

Saul Mendoza had won the Los Angeles Marathon in 1997 and ‘98, but in ‘97, Heinz Frei’s wheelchair suffered a flat tire in the sixth mile, and in ’98 he was too ill to come to Southern California.

But last year Frei and Mendoza were wheel to wheel, then Mendoza was ahead going uphill--which is what he does best--and behind on the flats, Frei’s forte. They made the turns, and Mendoza reached within himself for one final, desperate push to break the tape, with Frei’s chair a wheel behind.

Mendoza had climbed a personal mountain. Frei, not used to losing as the world record-holder at several distances--including the marathon--hung his head.

“Heinz Frei has been practicing for so long,” said Mendoza, a Mexico City native who trains in Georgia, and is back today to defend his title. “He has built his endurance so high. I’m one of the new racers. . . . I’m coming along.”

Frei, from Switzerland, is 42 and has raced seemingly forever.

Mendoza has raced for 15 years, but has been in competition with life for 32 of his 33 years, or since he was a victim of a polio epidemic in Mexico in the late 1960s.

“I grew up with a disability, and I look at it as a part of my life,” he says. “I couldn’t walk as fast as my [able-bodied] friends. But in school, things were equal. I could be as smart as they were.”

Mendoza is a lightweight, only 125 pounds, which hampers him going downhill, where gravity has an impact. Of that 125 pounds, about 100 of it is shoulders, which are fullback-sized from pushing his body and a 13-pound chair up Georgia’s Pine Mountain.

“I do 20 to 25 miles a day,” he says. “That’s about 125 miles a week. . . . But I also listen to my body. Some days my body might say, ‘Do eight miles,’ and my schedule says to do 20. I do eight.”

Self-discipline is one of the things he admires about Frei, whose stoic adherence is chiefly responsible for success that includes the world marathon record (1:20:14), the Los Angeles Marathon mark (1:27:10 in 1966) and race championships all over the world.

And now Frei has been vanquished, and Mendoza races today as the three-time defending champion.

Frei is back to try to get the finish-line push that eluded him a year ago.

Frei has his records and his Paralympic performances which have become legendary in disabled circles.

Mendoza has his Paralympic gold medal from the 5000 meters at Atlanta. And he has an award for being Mexico’s Athlete of the Year in 1996, when he was chosen over the country’s famed able-bodied soccer and baseball players and marathon runners.

The medal heightens his quest for fans not to view his race as one among disabled people.

Finishes like that of a year ago bring forth a different picture. It’s a NASCAR race, wheel to wheel around the final turn. The only thing missing was the checkered flag.