Wounded veterans fill Paralympic ranks

"Say what you like about these servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're going to have a (expletive) good Paralympic team in 2012."
 
British comedian Jimmy Carr is taking a lot of heat for that joke, told a few weeks ago in Manchester as part of his current tour, mostly it seems from politicians and editorial writers.
 
Patrick Mercer, a Conservative Member of Parliament, said certain subjects should be instinctively "off limits" for stand-up comics. He called for the end of Carr's career. An article in The Mirror reported British Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth was said to be "furious" over Carr's remark.
 
Meanwhile, those supposedly offended, actually got the joke. Bob Stoker told the Belfast Telegraph that his soldier son Michael, who was badly injured in a Taliban attack earlier this year, had heard the joke and thought it was funny.  "He was in the audience when Jimmy Carr told that particular joke at Selly Oak (a rehab hospital), that they all thought it was funny. They knew it was not said to abuse or upset them."
 
Melissa Stockwell, a U.S. Paralympic swimmer, did not understand why someone would get offended by Carr's comments.
 
"It's a positive thing absolutely, given that the soldiers coming back have the will, have the determination to go that far athletically," she said. "I think that's a testament to the spirit that a lot of us have."
 
Whichever way you fall on the topic, Carr identified a simple truth. The Paralympic Games and war are forever connected. A new documentary, Warrior Champions: From Baghdad to Beijing (www.warriorchampions.com) follows several American soldiers who were injured while serving their country in Iraq and made the transition to athlete in the effort to represent their country in Beijing at the 2008 Paralympic Games.
 
The three Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans featured in the documentary were among 16 U.S. military veterans who were part of the U.S. Paralympic team of 206 athletes at the Beijing Games. There were only five veterans, none from the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, on the team in Athens in 2004.
 
Unlike the ancient Olympics which celebrated achievement in combat skills, the Paralympics were created out of the desire to repair the results of war.
 
"The Paralympic movement doesn't exist without injured veterans being involved," said Charlie Huebner, Chief of Paralympics (www.usparalympics.org) for the USOC. "It began following World War II when rehabilitation specialists determined that sport was an important aspect (of their recovery)."
 
The predecessor competition to the Paralympics, the Stoke Mandeville Games were created for rehabilitating soldiers coming out of WWII. The first competition at England's Stoke Mandeville Hospital included only British veterans with spinal cord injuries and opened on the same day the 1948 Olympic Games began some 35 miles away in London. Four years later Dutch veterans joined in and an international event was born. The first Paralympic Games were held in 1960 in Rome. Now open to non-military with disabilities, the competition grew rapidly.
 
Since then, veterans of many international and civil conflicts have participated in the Paralympics. Israel's Paralympic team has been larger than its Olympic side seven times, more than doubling the Olympic team numbers in Seoul (62/19) and Barcelona (62/31).
 
It's not just soldiers. The entire Cambodian contingent at the 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games, a volleyball team, were land mine victims.
 
"Sports are a critical component of recovery, not just physically but mentally," says Lieutenant Colonel Daniel J. Dudek, Commander of the Madigan Army Medical Center's Warrior Transition Battalion at Ft. Lewis in Washington State. "It's not just a military thing. It's an American spirit. We want to compete. If there are two wheelchairs going down a hallway, we're going to race them."
 
Some Paralympic athletes are born into their situation and have adapted to their disability as they've grown while others come later to the game through injury or illness. Such is the case with soldiers coming out of Iraq, Afghanistan and other duties with significant injuries. They also come out with a proclivity to fitness, an attitude and a discipline that are inherent to athletic success.
 
"The army puts into you that competitive spirit," said Dudek. "Everything we do is competitive. We want to win. We want to be the best and that's a cultural thing they put into you. We can't tolerate coming in second place."
 
Warrior Champions, which premiered at the Charlotte Film Festival in late September, is the work of brothers Craig and Brent Renaud, the third in a trilogy of films that started with a year embedded in Iraq with a National Guard unit from their home state of Arkansas.
 
After seven soldiers from that unit were injured in a mortar attack where four others died, the Renauds returned to the U.S. to follow the soldiers through their treatment and rehab at Washington's Walter Reed Hospital.
 
"We found that the ones who did the best were the ones who got involved in sports programs," said Craig Renaud. "The sports really helped them get their lives back and over the depression and get them back into doing a lot of the things they did before, in some cases having better lives than they had before."
 
Learning of the Paralympics, the Renauds were curious if any of the soldiers they were following had a chance to compete in the Games.
 
 "They didn't make it to the elite level (for the Paralympics) but the truth is that most of the guys and women who get injured won't make it," said Craig Renaud. "But it's really about bringing the confidence back and bringing them back into the life that they want to live.
 
 "Not everybody can be like Scott and make it all the way to Beijing."
 
He's referring to Scott Winkler, an Army vet who was paralyzed after falling from a truck with a heavy box of ammo in Tikrit, Iraq in 2003. The film tracks Winkler and ex-Marine Carlos Leon, paraplegic and quadriplegic track and field athletes respectively, along with Army officer Melissa Stockwell, an above-knee amputee swimmer and Kortney Clemons, an above-knee amputee sprinter. All but Clemmons made it to the USA Paralympic Team for the Beijing Games.
 
Since its inception in 1960 the Paralympic Games have become increasingly more competitive with many athletes training and competing full time like their Olympic counterparts. Further, some of the intricacies of Paralympic and adaptive sport are unique and can take years to master. The time to adapt to a disabling injury, train, and excel usually takes years.
 
"It's a case by case basis," said Huebner. "Our armed forces are athletic and they have to be. The care is the best in the world and they are rehabbing quicker. Some people from day one want to get going and others need more time to heal."
 
Some were competitive athletes before joining the military. Winkler had been a sprinter and jumper in high school. Clemmons played junior college football. Stockwell, the first female soldier to lose a limb in combat, was a gymnast during high school and competed in rowing and diving while in college. Injured in April 2004 when an IED hit the Humvee she was riding in and took her left leg well above the knee, Stockwell completed the New York City marathon the following November using a handcycle. She later went to Breckenridge, Colorado and learned to ski on one leg.
 
"That's what changed my whole attitude," she said. "Flying in and out on one leg with the wind in my hair, I kinda felt I could do anything."
 
Surprisingly, with all she had done, Stockwell still hadn't heard about the Paralympics until former Paralympian and current USOC staff member John Register, an Army vet and a single leg amputee like Stockwell, in early 2005 gave a presentation at Walter Reed Hospital about the Games.
 
"I knew right away that was something I wanted to give a shot," she said.
 
Stockwell had been swimming recreationally as part of her rehabilitation. After learning about the Paralympics, she felt swimming was a sport she could excel in. "I really loved the water and knew I had a lot of room for improvement so I decided that was going to be my sport."
 
Quickly moving to the elite level, setting American records along the way, Stockwell learned just how competitive the Paralympics are when she didn't make the podium in Beijing.
 
Dudek believes that the team mentality of sport is something that appeals directly to a soldier's mentality. "You also want to be a winner as a team and that's where I think it goes hand in hand with the Paralympics," he said. "You want to be part of a bigger thing. You may be doing an individual sport but you understand that you are part of a collective."
 
As the U.S. engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan continues, thousands more soldiers are likely to return home with significant injuries and US Paralympics will continue to meet them at the doorstep. Awareness of the games and the opportunity is at an all-time high.
 
"Our infrastructure across the country provides opportunities for veterans coming home," said Huebner. "There's a much greater emphasis on providing programming and support at the community level so that allows somebody to pursue a goal."
 
For athletes featured in Warrior Champions such as Winkler, Leon, Stockwell, Clemmons, and their compatriots to follow, that goal is gold in 2012.