Jim Hite

A discussion about athletic competition coupled with discussions on sickness and injury among athletes got my thought processes in gear.

Joyce and I have been doing our running thing since the late 1970s. Many of you see us on the roads of Jenkins County and we appreciate the waves, toots on the horn, and especially your giving us that extra space on the side of the road as you pass. And since I took up cycling several years ago, such space as you pass is doubly appreciated!

It is a fact that our running life brings with it injuries that we would not have were we not runners. And as we add years to our lives and bodies, every twinge of pain brings with it the fear that something could interrupt our chosen physical activity.

An injury can come quickly. A wrong step, an unseen obstacle, losing concentration all are among the many causes of accidents that put us on the take-time-to-recover sideline.

But this is a very minor part to what I'd like to discuss.

We have been among athletes who, for some reason, have been struck down by what can only be called the randomness of life, among athletes who have been dealt a really tough setback only to overcome in the best way they could.

Examples abound. If you watched the broadcast of last year's Ironman, you saw the story of Jon Blais. In 2005, he completed the Ironman. In 2006, he watched it from a wheelchair, a victim of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Rudy Garcia-Tolsen lost his legs as a child, but is now a star athlete with a disability. Tim Willis, who was not permitted to compete in high school until many of us coaches petitioned the GHSA, went on to a fine high school and college running career, graduated from Georgia Southern, and medaled in the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, with his college coach as his guide runner.

Speaking of the Paralympics, Joyce and I were fortunate to be officials at those Games, held in the Olympic Stadium the week following the regular Olympics. The stories we could tell are legion.

Over 120 nations sent their disabled athletes to Atlanta for the 10 days of competition. Athletes of all ages, in wheelchairs, blind, without an arm, wearing prosthetics, with spinal injuries were on the surface of what is now Turner Field.

I worked the shot put, discus, and javelin. Those with spinal injuries had to be strapped into a stool. I remember a Vietnam veteran, whose spine was injured in an airborne assault many years previous. He medaled and on the bus back to the Olympic Village at Georgia Tech, said he was retiring, adding that he would not change a thing in his life.

There is my favorite, Mostafa Guhdija, his country's representative in the throwing events. From Bosnia, he was an engineer during the wars in the Balkans whose military job was to disarm land mines. Near the end of a day in which he disarmed dozens of mines, a mine exploded injuring his leg. Making his way to a medical tent, he was shot six times. The medical unit was surrounded overnight by enemy troops who would not let anyone out. Gangrene set in on Mostafa's leg, there were no drugs for pain, the doctor would not remove the leg. Mostafa took the saw himself, cut off his own leg, cauterized the wound with a cigarette.

He did not medal in the throws, his highest finish being fourth. That mattered not. He trained, he competed. And when he returned home, he continued to work with disabled athletes.

These and hundreds of similar stories do inspire, yet bring home in the most vivid manner possible the concept of immutable happenstance. The 'why' of all this is unanswerable. Glib clichés just don't cut it!

The physically challenged and those whose careers have been cut short or changed radically have brought so much living to the world of sport, for sport is nothing if it's not about what the body, and I might add the spirit, is capable of.

I am sure the Blaises, Garcias, Guhdijas of the athletic world would much rather be healthy and whole. But in their response to what came unbidden into their lives, they have earned something not available to the rest of us.

But it surely does make our self-centeredness, our complaining and griping sound like the biblical "tinkling brass and clanging cymbals."