 |
Fastest Amputee Looks to Paralympic Gold, Further Career
By Judith Phillips Otto  Last summer, Marlon Shirley set a new men's
amputee record in the 100m sprint at the Utah Summer Games, and
also took second place in a competition with able-bodied athletes.
His time of 10.97 seconds made him the first amputee to break the
11-second barrier in the 100m event, just slightly more than one
second behind the current able-bodied world record holder.
As a Paralympic sprinter and jumper, and a member of Team Ossur,
Shirley sets an inspirational example of what amputees can achieve
through a combination of ability and tireless effort. At age five,
he fell under a lawnmower and lost his left foot, but still played
high school football and competed successfully against able-bodied
athletes in the high-jump event.
Striving for the Top
What is it that drove Shirley to excel? Where did he discover
the commitment to become as good as he is? "The ability to just be
active came from being so young and wanting to learn and be like
everyone else," Shirley reflected. "But later in my life when I
became very competitive, a lot of people didn't think I would be
able to do what I was capable of doing, yet I knew I had the
ability to do so. I never settled for just showing up and being
there. I wanted to be the best at what I could do. That's how I
wanted people to remember me.
"The jumping is just a natural ability of mine--I never jumped
with a prosthesis before, so when I got into high-jumping, it was
all a matter of not wearing a prosthesis, run at the bar, and jump
it. But with the sprint team, it came later on, after years of
training and competition. I definitely wasn't a very good sprinter;
it took a long time to get to that point."
Why choose something that required so much effort?
"Sprinting is the glamour event of the games," Shirley
explained. "It decides who's the fastest in the world. And it's
where my abilities are most relevant."
He is often asked if his injury motivated him to become a
sprinter, or if he would have been a great sprinter, anyway. "Of
course I would have been fast, given that I run 10.9 seconds
without a foot. I don't know if I would have chosen track and
field. I never had a foot, so it really isn't possible for me to
speculate. Where might you be if you didn't have a foot? Nobody
knows. It's unfathomable."
It's not in Shirley's nature to settle for being second best, he
admits, and he is confident of where his drive to succeed has its
roots: "I do it for myself. I'm the one that's on the track, going
through the pain. I'm fortunate to have the ability to go on the
track and do something really profound in the sense that it will
make a difference for my sport and for other people, whether they
are amputees or not. It's selfish, certainly, because I'm the only
one that's out there when the gun goes off. I love sport--it's my
living, my career, and my ambition."
Helping To Develop New Products
Currently, Shirley is assisting Ossur, one of his sponsors, with
its research and development of products. He has recently returned
from a trip to Ossur's headquarters in Iceland, where he designed a
new sprint foot--the one he is currently using. His work with
developers is done primarily via phone, however, since he is
training full time with the high-performance sprint team in Chula
Vista, California. He also credits Sabolich Prosthetics &
Orthotics, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for helping him further his
life through sports.
Future Plans
 Future plans involve the Paralympic games
September 17-28 in Athens, Greece, where he plans to earn the gold
medal he believes he is capable of winning.
"I do have ambitions of taking my career further and possibly
competing on the able-bodied circuit over in Europe in one form or
another. In the long term, I see a good chance of staying involved
in the prosthetic industry. I have a lot of good ideas and a lot of
good connections where I think I could be very valuable in that
field. I've dedicated so much of my life to it that it would be
almost a sin for me not to continue it," he laughs. "Being an
amputee has been a vital factor in my life; I was able to use that
to create the lifestyle that I want to live," he says. "I encourage
all to take what they consider their misfortunes and turn them into
fortunes by grasping and acquiring the things they want to acquire
in life, because those things are obtainable.
Sports Can Be for Everyone
"Sports can really bring health and quality to one's
lifestyle--via golf, via exercising, via anything that keeps a
person active. Those are the things many amputees feel they cannot
do --to be active and mobile, which is not the case at all. I'm an
extreme case, and I hope that people don't shy away from sports
because I perform at a level they don't believe they can ever
reach. That's not the idea. The products we're developing for me
are the same products that Grandma and Grandpa are going to use
playing with their grandkids. I just take it to the next
level."
Check out his website at www.Mshirley.com
Shirley Shows "the Right Stuff"
An experience that showed Marlon Shirley's spirit and
determination was a much-publicized race against the man touted as
the world's greatest athlete: 1996 Olympic decathlon gold-medal
winner Dan O'Brien. As reported in the summer 2003 issue of
Challenge, published by Disabled Sports/USA (DS/USA), a puzzled
O'Brien asked an official before the race, "Am I supposed to
jog?"
"Marlon answered with his feet, breaking the previous time of
7.15 established by amputee sprinter Tony Volpentest and setting a
new 55m indoor record of 7.05," reported Challenge. 
Table Of Contents - September 2004
|
|
