Olympics | Nam Writes.

This is amazing. So amazing it warrents being repeated. This is amazing

You’ve probably heard about Oscar Pistorius, the South African double amputee, known as the Blade Runner, who will make Olympic history by running in the 400 meters and 4×400 meters relay races. That itself is amazing.

But I just stumbled upon this AFP story reporting that Oscar’s coach didn’t know his star trainee didn’t have legs for six months. Coach Jannie Brooks explained:

He trained with me for about six months before I knew he didn’t have legs… because he was doing everything at the same pace as everybody else, no excuses for not making any exercises, he was doing it flat out. And at the time he started to train, it was in winter so they always had tracksuit pants on. So we trained hard … we did explosive training … and only once we did one exercise and he didn’t go as deep as the other guys. I said listen you have to go a little deeper and he told me ‘listen, that’s the max I can go’ and I said why and he said ‘alright this is my story’.

One of the things I love about the Olympics are the stories of stunning triumph in the face of adversity and physical limitations. This story beats them all.

MY SHORT-LIVED ROWING CAREER

The Olympics kicked off today with women’s soccer (pause for awkward but exuberant cartwheeling). I am reminded of my own, albeit short-lived, sports career. I lasted all of two weeks on the University of Chicago crew team. My short and valiant story below: