It's Sunday, November 2, 2008, a day I'll forever remember as the day I finished the New York City Marathon a mere 2 hours and 23 minutes behind Paula Radcliffe -- doubling her winning time to the minute (and for this, my mother couldn't be more proud).But at 5:55 AM, that's not what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about the young man I'm walking past who looks a lot like Olympic athlete Josh George, the 24-year-old I spoke with over the phone on Friday. I've only seen him in pictures, but it could be him. It looks just like him. I have five minutes before my bus boards so I take my chance and approach him as he mills about with his fellow racers.
It is him, so I don't have to slink away embarrassed, thank goodness. We shake hands, exchange pleasantries -- he comes across just as kind in person as he did on the phone -- and then we part. I quickly add a, "Good luck!" as I turn to walk away, but then remember that luck is one of the last things he needs. People like me need luck to win (or just finish, really). George, on the other hand, has been training for this his entire life.
At just four years old, while playing in his 12th-story bedroom in northern Virginia, George slipped and fell out of the window, suffering paralysis from the chest, down. Family and friends were awed at his survival while he lay in the hospital in a full body cast. One doctor even called him "a living miracle." Society would not have expected that, at six, he'd tell his parents that he wanted to be an athlete. And no one could have predicted his future greatness as arguably the greatest wheelchair athlete in the entire world.
When speaking with George, though, you would never think you were speaking with a world-class athlete. This man has a unique quality. If I had to choose one word to describe it, I guess it would have to be "humility." But that doesn't seem to do him justice. Within moments of hearing his voice, you forget you're speaking to such a highly regarded athlete. I've heard high-school varsity has-beens speak of their "careers" with more pride than this guy. You are truly speaking to one of the most unassuming people you will ever meet. The kind of gentleman who won't talk about himself unless directly asked, and even then finds a way to downplay his accomplishments.
For example, when I asked him how he did in Beijing this summer, he said it "went fairly well.
"What do you mean by 'fairly well?' "
He meant he won a gold in the 100 meter T53 and a silver in the 800 meters. And I didn't even find out that his 100 meter finish also set a Paralympic World Record at 14.79 seconds until I stopped by his website. Further research revealed that George took home two bronze medals at the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens. He holds four Gold medals from the 2006 World Championships in the Netherlands (100m, 200m, 400m and 800m) and he led the United States men's basketball team to the Gold medal at the 2008 Parapan Games in Brazil.
As if that's not inspiring enough, George is also one of the 2008 recipients of the Arete Award for Courage in Sports - putting him in a class among Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong. But George would rather you not pay attention to those accomplishments behind the curtain. As he explains it, he didn't start with world class aspirations in mind. He just wanted to play sports.
His parents got him involved at a young age in sports groups -- particularly one wheelchair group in Baltimore, Maryland. It was here, he said, where everything they offered, he tried. "Everything" includes basketball, racing, archery, swimming, and table tennis. All of which easily makes him more athletic than most of the people I've ever met in my life; people to whom I'd now like to ask, "What's your excuse?" But that's me. I have the sneaking suspicion that you would never hear those words come out of George's mouth.
George raced throughout high school, but it wasn't until his freshman year at the University of Illinois that his career as a marathoner began to take shape. "I showed up at our first track practice and my coach had me do a time trial," he explained. "I did pretty well in the time trial and so he came to me after practice and said, 'Hey, you're gonna run the Chicago Marathon' [which] was a month later." And with that one month of training, George finished in 1:56, just over 20 minutes after the winner. And do you know what he told me when I asked him about his experience? Nope, it wasn't an expose about his blooming sense of pride and accomplishment. George laughed and said it was so miserable that "the only reason I ever did another one after that was because I qualified for Boston." Thank goodness he did. George has since won three Chicago Marathons (2003, 2004, 2006).
Sunday's marathon wasn't the finish that George was hoping for. In 2nd place at the 23 mile mark, Josh hit a pothole. His front and one of his rear tires went flat. He changed the rear tire and had to push the last 3 1/2 miles with a flat front tire. He finished 11th, still managing to be the top American to finish with a time of 1 hour and 54 minutes. Despite a time 20 minutes slower than he'd hoped, at 24 he's a virtual baby in the sport. Wheelchair racers rarely peak until their 30's, and some of George's toughest competetors are in their early 40's. With the years ahead of him, George hopes to improve in the 1,500 and 5,000 meters, but, he says, "the next couple of years I'm gonna be focusing primarily on marathon racing."
The sport would be so much less without him.
