ATHLETICS: There's real competition in these races and coaches are setting high targets writes Frank McNally
All athletes are equal at the Special Olympics, but some are more equal than others. And as the work of sorting them into their competitive grades got under way in earnest at Morton Stadium yesterday, the contrast in abilities on display in the same races was often stark.
In the men's 100-metre preliminaries, one runner might bolt up the track in 11-odd seconds with the flawless technique of a Carl Lewis. For another, however, the challenge was to complete the race in roughly the same lane that he began.
Underlining the difficulties faced by some, officials at the start would gently inquire of certain competitors if they understood what the 100-metres demanded: "Remember it's just a straight run. No bends."
On the other hand, in the day's only track final for men, you'd have been forgiven for asking why the race was in any way "special". The 3,000 metres (division 1) looked like a 3,000 metres in any international athletics meeting, up to and including the fact that there was a Kenyan so far in front that he and the rest of the field were sometimes in different parishes.
In keeping with his country's tradition in middle-distance running, Godfrey Obasela duly passed the finish line looking like he'd just completed a mild warm-up exercise.
But there is real competition in these races, and for all the talk of everyone being a winner, coaches do not shirk from setting targets for their athletes.
For American Joe Kaczynski (18), in the chasing pack behind Obasela, the target with two laps to go was to reel in another Kenyan runner in third place. And urged by his ruthless connections to "take him on the back straight", he did just that to collar the bronze medal.
"We challenge the athletes," confirmed a smiling Mickie McManamon (a woman, incidentally - the Mickie is short for Mary Katherine) head coach of Kaczynski's USA Great Lakes team and one of the pioneers from Eunice Shriver's summer camp, the 1960s forerunner to the Special Olympic movement.
But Joe is fond of a challenge. Back in March he broke his foot in an 800-metre race and initially tried to cover this up lest his coach advise him to lay off training. When the broken foot itself advised him to lay off training, he spent two months working out in a swimming pool and only got back to running five weeks ago. On Thursday he competes in the 5,000, and will round off a busy week by anchoring his team in the 4 x 400 relay.
Glory-seeking athletes and unscrupulous coaches could take advantage of the preliminaries system to, for example, avoid the company of crack Kenyans and get a softer final. But to forestall any such calculations, the Games have an "honest effort" rule, backed up by disqualification for a finalist who finds more than 15 per cent of an improvement on his or her preliminaries. Quantum leaps are not allowed here, even in the running long jump.
So while technique and co-ordination were occasionally missing at Santry yesterday, honest effort was in abundant supply. And one of the other things that differentiates this from ordinary athletics meetings is that everywhere you looked there was something to make the spine tingle.
Different too was the service provided by volunteers, more than 1,000 of them at Santry alone. Competitors at these championships are travelling first class.
To mention just one example, at the start of a race each runner has a helper with a basket to collect shoes, caps, tracksuits, and other extraneous items, and reconcile these with their owners on arrival at the finish line.
A visiting Ms Linda Shriver - wife of Games CEO Tim - singled out the volunteer movement for making this, so far at least, the best Games she'd seen.
"I say that humbly because my husband organised the games in Connecticut in 1995, and I thought I'd never seen anything like those again. But Ireland has blown me away."
It may come as more of a surprise to the Government that Ms Shriver also credits Ireland's "fantastic" sporting facilities, Bertie Bowl or no.
And maybe it was the afterglow from Croke Park on Saturday night, but even dowdy old Morton Stadium looked wonderful yesterday. The sunshine helped too, and the organisers can only hope that both the weather and the welcome will stay warm for another week.