How I Became Involved in Amputee Swimming
 A few years after becoming an amputee, I happened
upon a newspaper article in the local paper about an amputee
swimmer named Jackie Mitchell, who had just earned a bronze
medallion in the 1976 Olympiad for the Disabled, held in
Toronto, Canada. The 1976 Olympiad for the Physically Disabled
was the first Olympiad with full competition for
blind, paralyzed, and amputee athletes. It also marked the
first time sports for the disabled was recognized as a true
sporting event in its own right, and not just a rehabilitation
measure for people with disabilities.
Reading this article about Jackie Mitchell made me
realize that this was something I should become involved in. I
had always loved the water, and often I would be the last one
out of the lake, returning to our family campsite with blue
lips from being in the water for so long. So I got out the
phone book, called Jackie Mitchell and spoke to her about
competitive swimming for amputees. We arranged a meeting at
the Niagara Falls YMCA, where Jackie trained with her coach,
Mac Bowman.
I began training with Jackie and Mr. Bowman 4
or five nights a week. I loved it! I learned how to swim
more efficiently under Mac's guidance, and gained some
racing experience against other teams in our league,
mostly children and teenagers. I was the oldest at 21
years of age.
Racing against the able bodied seemed only
natural to me. It was good training and certainly a
challenge. I could feel more acceptance of myself as a
swimmer and an athlete. I also found that being fit was
very beneficial to walking on an above knee prosthesis.
It wasn't always easy, but the efforts paid benefits for
many years to come. I developed more solid discipline
and was able to focus on improving my personal best
times in preparation for my first disability games
competition in Brantford, Ontario.
My First Competition Against Other Amputee
Swimmers - 1977 Ontario Games for the Physically
Disabled - Brantford, Ontario.
By the summer of 1977, I had been training for
about 6 months, had a few races under my belt, and I
felt I was ready for my first major competition.
Swimming is basically an individual sport, and I had
developed a little bit of confidence and knew that I was
swimming well.
Sports for the Disabled was relatively new
around this time, especially integrated ones. Attending
my first event of this size was a real eye opener for
me. This was my exposure to all sorts of disabilities
and conditions. These people were all normal just like
me. They just had little defects and huge hearts. There were blind athletes, athletes with cerebral
palsy, paraplegic competitions and wheelchair
basketball. I thought it was all really cool and a lot
of fun.
As I am relying completely on memories from 25
years ago, I won't bore you with all the details. I'm
just trying to give you the overall effect of my
participation in these games, and how it
contributed to my self image and perception of myself as
a "person with a disability".
The overall effect of watching all these events
unfold made me feel a lot of respect for the daily
challenges of all these people. Yet here they were
competing against each other, and having a good time
with each other in the evening, and carrying on through
life by facing these challenges up front and not letting
their so called disability prevent them from enjoying as
complete a life as possible. When you think about it,
what else is there to do? It's either sink or swim,
pardon the pun.
For me, the reality of coming close to death
gave me a much greater appreciation for life, and I
heard similar comments from so many of these athletes.
It's not just a corny statement. It's a fact of life for
myself and a lot of others.
I was
classified for my events according to my level of
disability. Being an above knee amputee, I was placed in
a classification where I would be competing against
other single above knee amputees. There were swimmers
from all across Ontario, and it seemed there was some
good competition. Some classifications would end up
having only one or two competitors at this time, so I
was fortunate to have a good field to race
against.
With my family in attendance, I won four out of
the five races I was in. I recall just doing what Mac
had taught me to do, and I was really up for the races
and ready to go. Perhaps I had finally found something I
was good at.
I wish I could relate more to you about this or
provide some stats, but after moving last year, I can't
locate my scrap book yet. When I do, I will find a lot
more details and publish them on this site. But for now,
it seemed like I had found a new path in life.
My First National Competition - 1977
Canadian Games for the Physically Disabled - Edmonton,
Alberta
 We traveled
that year , where we were in competition with
disabled athletes from across Canada. We stayed and competed
at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
I had come to know so many disabled athletes by now, and I
was constantly inspired by all of them. I began to feel in
some ways as if I didn't have it so bad, especially in
comparison to some of the others. Everybody seemed to perceive
of their conditions in a matter of fact kind of way, as if it
were just a little inconvenience.
Although we were now competing at a national level, my main
competition remained exactly the same: my roommate and fellow
Ontario Team member, whose name I can’t recall. He’s the
guy on the photo pages with the Ontario shirt and thick
glasses. He had a little more experience than I did, having
taken part in the Olympiad for the Disabled in Toronto in
1976. He was the reason I won the silver medal in backstroke
at the provincials. However, at the nationals I finally
managed to beat him out in my quest for gold.
Two things I do recall: Being interviewed on television for
the first time, and receiving my medals from Sir Douglas
Bader, the world famous double amputee who flew planes and
escaped from POW camps so many times, they finally took his
artificial legs away from him. You can view a couple pictures
of this guy giving out medals on my swimming photo page, as
well as checking out his web site at http://www.douglasbaderfoundation.com/aboutdbin.htm.
My first national competition was a great success, with a
lot of gold hardware being collected for the trip home. I felt
like a champion. The entire experience was one that I never
thought would have happened to me. In retrospect, becoming an
amputee opened a few doors of opportunity for me. It’s
important to remember that I had a good attitude about my
disability from the beginning. Had I been sitting around
moping, perhaps this great opportunity to excel at something
would have passed me by completely?
1978-1980
– Various Provincial, National and International
Competitions
Rather
than make a futile attempt to recall all the events and
competitions I took part in, in this section I will summarize
whatever I can recall from these years. As I am writing
completely from memory of events that took place
over 25
years ago, obviously I am not able to completely remember
everything, so I will not bore you with too much detail here.
Instead, I will focus on the highlights and the things I can
remember.
The
1978 Ontario Games for the Physically Disabled were held in
Windsor, Ontario. This was another very successful meet for
me, taking home some hardware as well as the Best Male Amputee
Athlete Award.
Also
in the summer of 1978, we were fortunate enough to travel to
St. John’s, Newfoundland for two weeks of competition. I
don’t know why I remember this one so well. Perhaps it’s
because we had such a good time competing and enjoying the
East Coast hospitality. Also, my mother and her boyfriend, and
my brother Mike drove all the way from Niagara Falls, Ontario
to Newfoundland to watch me race!
Flying
to Newfoundland is something I can never forget. We left
Toronto and had to make a stop in New Brunswick to pick up
some more athletes. Somewhere over the ocean on our way to the
rock, we hit some pretty severe turbulence, and the plane
suddenly dropped about 500 feet. At the precise moment, I got
hit with a sinus pain behind my eyes from the drop in cabin
pressure, and it stayed with me for the next 48 hours. After I
recovered from this, I was ready to race.
We stayed and
competed at Memorial University, a lovely campus in a
beautiful city full of charm. Thanks to the internet, I have
been able to “revisit” some of these places, although I
have been unsuccessful in finding pictures of aquatic centers
or any references to these events.
The
races went well, and I took home a few medals. It was
especially nice having my family with me at this event. When
my competition was over, we treated ourselves to some
hospitality Newfie style. We visited a few pubs and I got up
and sang at one of them. My brother met a woman, who invited
us over for a dinner called Fish and Brews or something. We
also had to make sure we had a fair sampling of Schooner Beer
and Newfie Screech!
In
the summer of 1979, I traveled with the Canadian Amputee Team
to Skoke Mandeville in Aylesbury, England to compete in the
World Amputee Games. Stoke Mandeville is the site of the
original Paralympic games in 1952.
We
stayed at the hospital, enjoying our daily tv dinners. To say
the least, the food at this competition left a little to be
desired. There used to be a perception that disabled athletes
weren't athletes. But our training and enthusiasm and desire
were exactly the same. Which meant we needed good food! I
remember taking a cab into town just to get some fish and
chips, and another time for Kentucky Fried chicken. Not exactly healthy
choices but it sure beat Salisbury Steak again.
The
greasy food must have helped. I won my first international
medal in the 100M Breaststroke final, in a 25 metre pool with
no starting blocks. The competition was very fierce and I was
proud to have represented my team so well. This was perhaps my
best performance ever in competition, as far as medals go. I
also won a silver medal that year for 100M Butterfly.
 The
next year, 1980 presented my loftiest goal so far, the one I
had been working toward all along. Holland was the host of the
1980 Olympiad for the Disabled, and they did it in style. We
entire Canadian contingent trained for two weeks at a hostel
of some kind near Arnhem. All the disability groups shared the
space, and it was a real team feeling being all together in a
different country. It gave us the chance to mingle and not
just hang with the amputees, if you know what I'm saying. We
even ate at long tables together, family style with bowls and
trays of good food being passed around.
Having
hardly ever raced in a 50 metre pool, I was always a little
wary of them. I guess I was used to a 25 metre pool with three
turns for a 100M race. Standing at the starting block one day,
I remember staring down the length of the lane and thinking
that
We
were housed in actual military barracks bunk bed style. This
place was cool. The food was excellent, especially the
breakfasts. Plenty of new things to try and different cheeses,
etc. Not your typical Canadian breakfast, but very good.
There
were thirty two countries competing here, and I believe this
was one of the biggest disabled sporting events of its time.
The competition was foremost on our minds and the competition
was serious. I had been carb loading after a three week hiatus
from carbs, and I was in peak form physically. Mentally, I
wasn't so sure.
I
raced the best I could in the 200M IM event, and I was leading
the pack for three quarters of the way. In the final 50M
freestyle, I started to fade and panicked a little. I saw the
other swimmers passing me and I lost my technique a bit,
ending up in a fourth place finished. Disappointing? You bet.
I
wasn't finished yet. however. Due to changes in the racing
rules for amputees that year, above knee amputees were now
racing against below knee amputees in the same classification.
Suffice it to say, most of the AK's didn't make the finals,
including me. The same rule applied for the 100M backstroke.
That left the 100M breaststroke and the 100M butterfly as my
best chances for a medal placing.
I
remember seeing this Spanish guy around at training time named
Carlos, I think. He was my main competition and I recall him
telling me breaststroke was not his thing. Well, he got one
over on me, cause he smoked me in the final. He was fast. I
don't recall our times, but he was moving! I finished in
second and was feeling a lot better by that time.
Butterfly
came next and I made the finals. This was the first time we
actually had finals. Most of my events hadn't included
qualifying rounds at this point in the games history. The
butterfly event was not my favorite, but I made a pretty good
effort in the last few metres to gain a third place, bronze
medal finish. I was pretty happy with my results overall.
The
Holland experience was the end of it for me. It was a once in
a lifetime experience and I was truly exhausted by the time I
got home. We did a little nightclubbing in the bars of Arnhem
on a few occasions at the end of our stay, and we were still a
little out of it at the airport the next morning. We made a
few friends though and had a good time.
Becoming
involved in disabled swimming has enabled me to function
better as an amputee and as a person, having found in myself
and my fellow competitors a deep desire to carry on despite
whatever life throws at us. And a much deeper appreciation of
simply still being alive.
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