Tatyana McFadden, one of the most decorated Paralympic athletes of all time, has always been on the verge of making Para athletic history.
After yesterday’s silver-medal performance in the 100-meter dash in the T-34 category, she’s participating in this afternoon’s 800-meter race, as well as Sunday’s marathon.
McFadden has won a total of 21 Paralympic medals thus far — 20 in track in the summer Paralympics, and one in cross-country skiing at the winter Paralympics. Yup, she’s fast in the snow as well as on the track.
The thing about McFadden is that she isn’t just a person who goes out on a track (or in the snow) and is faster than almost everybody else. She’s an activist for the disabled, one who pushed that Maryland Public High Schools Athletic Association to require that schools give students with disabilities the opportunity to compete in interscholastic athletics.
It was the basis of a national law passed in 2013. And even though you don’t see a lot of varsity para athletes in many athletic endeavors, you are seeing more of an acceptance of differently-abled people in high schools, whether it is field hockey players with Down Syndrome, swimmers who were born without a limb, or basketball players with autism.
And that’s a universal lesson, one which was espoused by the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin:
The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.
