Iraq veterans encouraged as Paralympics participants

Friday's Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics will mark the start of a two-week series of dreams-come-true for athletes from around the world. But only once they have gone home will another U.S. athlete, Scott Winkler, get his chance for glory in Beijing.

Winkler is one of 208 American athletes going to Beijing for September's Paralympic Games. He is one of two on the U.S. team with combat-related injuries suffered while serving in Iraq. The Games are a vital part of his recovery from the war, and his participation is a product of a growing effort to get veterans involved with Paralympic sports.

There are 12 military veterans on the U.S. team, dozens more are in Paralympic training programs, and Olympic officials are actively recruiting from military ranks.

"We're taking existing resources that are already available and then providing more training and organization and expertise for those individuals coming home," said Charlie Huebner, chief of Paralympics for the U.S. Olympic Committee. "It is a good fit because our military personnel are already pretty physically active. Also the idea of representing their country is very important to them."

Huebner predicted that 10 percent to 15 percent of America's Paralympic athletes will be veterans by the 2012 games.

Winkler, 35, of Augusta, Ga., was injured in Tikrit in 2003 when he fell off the back of a truck while holding 50 pounds of ammunition. His foot became stuck in a strap while his torso twisted completely around, causing to become a paraplegic.

"For a long time I went through a lot of depression," Winkler said. "Finally I said, 'Enough is enough'."

He attended a Paralympic summer camp in Colorado Springs in October 2006 and tried a number of different sports, finally settling on the shot put. In 2007, he set a world adaptive shot put record with a throw of 10.23 meters at the U.S. Paralympics National Championships. He topped that throw this year, heaving the shot 10.97 meters at the national team trials after being reclassified to a higher competitive level. He holds the American record in his new disability category.

About 4,000 athletes will compete in the Paralympic Games in Beijing from Sept. 6 to 17. They will compete in 19 sports, including track and field, swimming, cycling, judo, table tennis and soccer.

To expand the options of the disabled, rehabilitative sports programs have been cropping up around the country.

One of those programs is Team Semper Fi, which provides coaching, training, transportation and lodging to U.S. Marine, Navy and Army combat veterans who want to compete as part of their recovery. It is sponsored by the nonprofit Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund in partnership with the U.S. Paralympics.

"One of our biggest supporters is the U.S. Paralympics team," said Derek McGinnis, a 30-year-old Iraq war veteran who recently completed the swim and run portions of San Francisco's Escape From Alcatraz triathlon.

The Paralympic idea first took root in 1944 when Dr. Ludwig Guttmann, of Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Great Britain, began introducing sports as a way to engage war veterans with spinal injuries in the rehabilitation process.

Nevertheless, the concept of actually recruiting and training disabled athletes for competition is new, Huebner said. The USOC did not start its Paralympic military program until 2003.

Besides providing training and technical assistance to veterans' hospitals, military installations and military medical centers, the program has begun to include local recreation and park departments and disability centers.

"I can't tell you how important sport is in rehabilitation, not just in the physical side, but the mental side," said Huebner, whose amputee grandfather was once featured in "Ripley's Believe it Or Not" for being a one-armed pitcher with a .400 batting average.Josh Olson, 28, a Washington Army marksman who barely missed making the Paralympic team, said the training and concentration it took to turn himself into a competition-level shooter has opened new horizons for him.

"It gives you something else to do, something to focus on because when you are sitting in the hospital, you are depressed and thinking, 'Oh, my life is over now,' " said Olson, who lost a leg in 2003 when his truck was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Tel Afar, Iraq.

A Paralympics primer

-- The Beijing Paralympics begin Sept. 6.

-- The first competition was held for World War II veterans at the Stoke Mandeville hospital in Great Britain during the 1948 Olympics in London.

-- The 1960 competition in Rome was the first to be officially coordinated with the Olympics.

-- The first Winter Games were held in Sweden in 1976.

-- Paralympics has been the name of the games since 1988.

-- Besides offering many Olympic sports, the Paralympics include special sports like Goal Ball, a team sport for the visually impaired, and Wheelchair Rugby, also known as Quad Rugby, for quadriplegics.

-- Competitors are grouped based on the nature and severity of their disabilities, from impaired sight to intellectual disability to use of wheelchairs or prosthetics.

(E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite(at)sfchronicle.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)