by Oral O. Miller
When Marla Runyan earned a place on the U.S. Olympic team during the finals of the U.S. Track and Field Championships in Sacramento, Calif., in July 2000, she captured the attention of the mainstream media and attained a goal which many blind athletes who preceded her had attempted to achieve — representing the United States in the Olympic Games.
As far back as the early 1930s a legally blind swimmer — the late Arthur Copeland, then a student at Temple University and a graduate of the Overbrook School for the Blind — missed qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Team by only fractions of a second. Since then outstanding blind athletes including heavyweight judo fighter Kevin Szott and Paralympic world record holding swimmer Trischa Zorn, have come oh so close to winning berths, while competing in mainstreamed competition, on the U.S. Olympic teams. Their efforts and athletic careers were encouraged and supported by coaches and other officials connected with mainstream sports organizations, in addition to disabled sports organizations, such as the U.S. Association of Blind Athletes (USABA).
The talent and potential of legally blind runner Marla Runyan of Camarillo, CA, were recognized early. Many of her coaches and officials crossed their fingers and held their collective breath as reports started circulating in early 1999 about the enormous progress that Marla, then 30 years old and a teacher of deaf-blind children, had made while transitioning from a Paralympic champion athlete to a bona fide contender in the 1,500-meter run. Her college track coach from San Diego State University, from which she had graduated in 1991, and the USABA coaches were already familiar with her enormous talent; she had demonstrated it to the world in 1992 by winning four gold medals at the Paralympics in Barcelona and then by winning the grueling heptathlon at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta while setting various national track and field records for blind athletes during the intervening years. As has been widely reported by the national and international media in recent weeks, she earned a place on the U.S. Olympic team during the finals of the U.S. Track and Field Championships in Sacramento by breaking away from the pack in the last few hundred meters, overtaking the sprinting athlete in the position ahead of her, fighting off a desperate charge by that runner in the last few dozen meters and barely crossing the line ahead of that runner.
Marla Runyan, who now lives and trains in Eugene, Ore., is a legally blind woman with a visual acuity of 20/400 and very limited central vision. As a fully sighted child in southern California she participated in gymnastics and soccer, but around age 8 she started having visual difficulties. After various and frightening misdiagnoses, she was diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease, which was gradually destroying her central visual field while greatly reducing the acuity of her remaining peripheral vision. In spite of her visual loss Runyan was determined to maintain her straight-A average — by holding her books virtually at nose level and by using enlarged copies of school materials painstakingly prepared by her mother. Eventually she entered into a school program for children with visual impairments.
By the time she was 14, Runyan could no longer see the soccer ball, so she turned to track and field sports. At Camarillo High School, she set the school record in the high jump although she could only see the bar when she was almost on top of it. Her father said that her achievements in athletics gave her satisfying stature and recognition among her peers. She herself said, “I loved to play sports because I felt I could be more like everybody else and actually I felt I could be even better than everybody else!”
At San Diego State University, Runyan discovered the value of taking advantage of aids and services such as audio tapes and volunteer readers. At the same time, she decided that she wanted to compete in more than the high jump and the sprints. Her parents were initially dismayed when she informed them that she intended to become a heptathlete and to compete in the seven events making up the heptathlon — the 100-meter hurdles, the high jump, the shot put, the 200-meter dash, the long jump, the javelin throw and the 800-meter run.
Her track coach at San Diego State trained her to be a hurdler — at the relatively high price of black-and-blue shins. He explains, “She was amazed when she found out all the other girls could see the hurdles from the start line!”
Runyan gradually mastered the hurdles by learning to count the steps between hurdles and became an excellent heptathlete, winning the gold medal in that event in the 1996 Paralympics and setting the heptathlon 800-meter record during the 1996 U.S. Olympic Trials, finishing tenth overall against the best sighted female heptathletes in the USA.
Because of her outstanding performance in the heptathlon’s 800-meter run and what she considered to be a disappointing finish in the heptathlon Olympic trials in 1996, Runyan decided to concentrate on middle-distance running. She moved to Eugene, Ore., which was considered by many to be the running capital of the United States, and there met and came under the coaching direction of Mike Manley, who was a former marathoner and Olympic steeplechase competitor.
Manley has explained that he trains Runyan like any other world-class athlete, but with a few minor differences — such as announcing himself when he approaches and no longer sending her on cross-country runs by herself. After one such cross-country trek she came back battered by branches and debris that had lined the trail, well after the other runners.
While taking part in the World Track and Field Championships in Seville, Spain, last year, Runyan went out for a jog by herself along the Guadalupe River, but during the return she was unable to read the street signs or identify her hotel off in the distance. She also had difficulty seeing such potential hazards as slightly raised manhole covers, parking meters and speeding cyclists who seemed to pop up from nowhere.
Runyan says she feels most empowered and secure while running around an oval track in a competitive race. While in Seville, she said, “If I was suddenly cured or my vision was normal, I don’t think I would be running any faster. I think life would be easier, but I don’t think I would be running any faster.”
While running, Runyan cannot identify the faces of her competitors, so she memorizes identifying factors such as the colors they are wearing or clearly visible features like ponytails.
Sports analysts who have observed her in various races have speculated that she may tend to avoid running “in the middle of the pack,” in the midst of flying feet and elbows because of her impaired vision; as a result, so the speculation goes, she is sometimes forced to the outside of the track and required to run that extra distance. However, Marla formulates her own strategy for each race and attempts to run accordingly. For example, at the recent indoor national track and field championships she started fast and led the field from start to finish. She likes to pace herself so the leaders do not get so far ahead as to be out of her sight and she said that in one race she paced herself according to the position information that was being updated over the public address system in the stadium.
Over the past year Runyan has received increasing attention from the national and international media as she has improved in almost every event in which she has competed. Over the years, she has sustained a few running injuries and, in fact, prior to the recent race at which she won her spot on the Olympic team she was unable to do her full warm-up routine because of a knee injury which as late as a week before the race had been expected to keep her from competing at all.
Although Marla Runyan has been training at an elite level and competing in world-class races for the past 18 months, she has recognized that her performance may serve as an inspiration for other visually impaired people and help educate the general public about the capabilities of legally blind people. To these ends she has, subject to training and racing limitations, made herself available to organizations interested in publicizing her achievements and goals.
Through her tenacity, hard work, ambition and determination, Marla Runyan has “raised the bar” by which blind and visually impaired people will be compared. It is obvious that not all blind or visually impaired people will have the opportunity or will be able to accomplish in their fields what she has accomplished as an athlete, but her accomplishments to date underscore the level to which disabled people may rise in their selected areas. We recognize that Marla will be competing against the very best athletes in the world who will give no quarter on the running track and we wish her the best of all possible good fortune.