December 17, 2008 9:01 AM
Special Olympics feature - thank you, Sports Illustrated
Thanks to Maria, for the tip on this Sports Illustrated feature - and to Amy for supplying the link:
[Click photo for slide show]Small Steps, Great Strides
Jack McCallum
December 8, 2008On the 40th anniversary of the first Special Olympics, SI presents its first Sportsman of the Year Legacy Award to the movement's founder, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who has used athletics to change the world for people with intellectual disabilities
ON A STEAMY July 20 morning in 1968 Eunice Kennedy Shriver stepped up to the microphone at Soldier Field in Chicago and convened the first Special Olympics Games. It was only seven weeks after her younger brother Robert had been gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and about five weeks before the Windy City exploded in violent confrontations between police and protestors at the Democratic National Convention.
The assassination and the violence in the streets profoundly altered the American political landscape ... and, in a much different way, so did the Games at Soldier Field.
With a crowd of fewer than 100 people dotting the 85,000-seat stadium, about 1,000 athletes from 26 states and Canada, all of them routinely classified in those days as mentally retarded, marched in the opening ceremonies and followed Shriver as she recited what is still the Special Olympics oath:
Let me win,
but if I cannot win,
let me be brave
in the attempt.Chicago mayor Richard Daley, who would become a polarizing figure at the convention that August, attended the four-day event and told Shriver, "You know, Eunice, the world will never be the same after this."
While skeptics shook their heads and most of the press ignored the unprecedented competition, Shriver boldly predicted that one million of the world's intellectually challenged would someday compete athletically. She was wrong. Today, three million Special Olympics athletes are training year-round in all 50 states and 181 countries. They run races, toss softballs, lift weights, ski moguls, volley tennis balls and pirouette on skates.
Read entire article here.
Posted in Disabilities, Down syndrome | Permalink
Comments
Beautiful pictures....if only all parents who are advised to abort because of a disability being likely in their child could see these...it sure presents another view and prognosis than is often given to them.
Posted by: Reen | December 17, 2008 10:27 AM
Love the coverage. But those parents who want to abort will not see those pictures as such. The fact of the matter is that they should not be advised to abort. They should be given an unbiased presentation of options.
Posted by: Cath Young | December 17, 2008 12:03 PM
