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A Rough Road

Blind Olympian no different

Cautiously the questions begin to creep up as a skier from Calgary is set to carve his name into Olympic history.

His name is Brian McKeever, and before he even straps on his skis history books will bear his name as the first winter-sport athlete to compete in both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

On Jan. 22, the legally blind McKeever was named to the Canadian Olympic cross-country skiing team. Using the remaining 10 per cent of his vision – all of it periphery – and his brother Robin as guide, he has previously won seven Paralympic medals.

But around all the acclaim and fervor of congratulation that McKeever indisputably deserves for his accomplishments nasty little questions were traded back and forth.

“Good for him, but has he not taken a spot from a sighted athlete? Was it not good enough for him to be in the Paralympics only?” wrote a poster on the Calgary Herald’s website.

Steve Simmons, a columnist for the Toronto Sun, offered his congratulations to the skier but then remarked that McKeever’s making the team ”brings a new credibility to the Paralympics that we’ve never known before,” seeming to imply that the event was lacking legitimacy before.

These are both disquieting points of view, all-too-reminiscent of the antiquated belief that diminished capacity equals just that. For his part, McKeever joked about the questions that really shouldn’t be asked.

“I understand,” he said. “People hear some blind guy is trying to make it to the Olympics, and they think that’s crazy.”

McKeever was 19-years-old when the clear eyes he had enjoyed all his life began to cloud over. The rising star on the Canadian junior cross-country ski team with Olympic aspirations was diagnosed with Stargardt’s Disease.

He didn’t need a doctor to explain to him what would happen next, the very same genetic disorder had quietly stolen most of his father’s and his aunt’s vision. He knew what awaited him, the blurriness that would eat away at what he saw.

But McKeever did not give up on his Olympic dream, accepting that he needed to simply alter it slightly.

“For me, the ideal season is to go to the Olympics and then do what I want to do at the Paralympics,” he said. “It would be a disaster for me to qualify for the Olympics and then race poorly in the Paralympics.

“It was never an either/or thing for me.”

This begs the real question: If the actual competitors don’t see the difference in competition, then why do we?

Questioning McKeever or the events he has competed in, simply because he does not achieve some unwritten rule for normalcy in competitors, shows a severely backwards way of thinking and a basic lack of understanding of what an athletic competition is.

McKeever is a sterling example of pure athletic ability stretching across societal expectations and prejudices. He should be celebrated for it, not questioned.

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