“The most inspiring stories are at the back of the pack,” two-time Boston Marathon winner Joan Benoit Samuelson said at the start of the clinic. “Our motto is ‘There is no finish line.' There are always more challenges out there. You people who came out today are the spokesmen for those challenges.”
Organized by the Challenged Athletes Foundation, which helps amputees and others with disabilities participate in sports, the clinic brought together marathon victims, those wounded in the military and other amputees. Coach Bob Gailey ran them through a series of increasingly complicated drills, then lined them up for an obstacle course that was the highlight of the day.
Similarly skilled participants match up in a relay race. Some runners fall; others have trouble weaving through the cones or stepping around the ropes. But everyone cheered.
One woman made her way through the lanes, saying aloud, with a smile, “I'm not going to fall this time.” Another wore a T-shirt that said, “I am a Champutee.”
“It's inspiring,” said David Driscoll, a doctor who was working at the marathon's finish line medical tent on race day. Because his son, Brendan, was born with an incomplete tibia and fibula, the elder Driscoll has also volunteered with the Challenged Athletes Foundation.
“It's very enlightening to see them coming and to see they're overcoming that. It helps me, too, to work through it,” Driscoll said. “I don't say, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.' I say, ‘How can I be more like them.”'
Latest World News
