Interview with Jeff Adams Canada's top wheelchair track athlete

Ian Gregson

Jeff Adams gained an empathic introduction to many Canadians via his athletic performance at the Barcelona Olympics 1500 meter wheelchair event. Despite a mechanical failure during the race, Adams' performance showed millions that athletes with disability are also prone to dramatic failures just like everyone else. Adams recently won the wheelchair 1500m event at the I.A.A.F. World Championship in Goteborg, Sweden.

Adams' outspoken view of disability sport in Canada has cost him financially. He continues to criticise the very sport that has brought him into public limelight.

The 800m for wheelchair men was not an official event at the Commonwealth Games, nor was the recent 1500m win in Goteborg, Sweden. How do you feel about this continued "exhibition" status? I don't think we should have an official event until we get the able-bodied to compete in wheelchairs. I don't think we should have any segregated event at an elite competition such as the Commonwealth Games or Worlds or Olympics.

It didn't fit with the philosophy and the direction of the Games and what the Games are all about. I don't have any problem at not receiving a medal here because there are no able bodied athletes competing in wheelchair events.

Until the sport is a pure sport and is open to the entirety of the worlds population like any of the other sports we shouldn't have official medals.

I don't see this event as a wheelchair sport anymore, it is a sport first and foremost. The reality of it is my next door neighbour who is only 5ft 2in, does he have a disability? Should he have his own event at the World Championships? If there are 50,000 people who are 5ft 2in, in the world who want an event at the World Championship should they get an event ? Regardless if they train twice a day.

There are two factors in being an elite athlete: one is you are graced with a physical ability and the second is you make the most to work with that physical ability. I think the uniqueness of wheelchair sport is that we have an implement that allows us to reverse integrate and also to lessen our disability to the point were we can compete against able bodied.

It is unfortunate but a reality you can't reverse integrate in any of the disability groups. You can't without some radical surgical procedures reverse integrate in to amputee events. Personally, I don't discriminate between a person who is born short and a person who is born thalidomide and with no legs.

You can't paint a thin line in terms of discriminating between disabilities. It is a thick fuzzy line for determining who has a disability and who doesn't. In reality 90% of the world's population has some kind of disability. If you are born with slow-twitch fibres that's a disability in regard to becoming a 100m runner. Its a reality that a lot of people have to live with.

I don't think the level of competition is the same as with other disability groups. I don't mean to be calling down any individual athlete but a lot of the members of the Canadian National team don't train as hard as the able-bodied do and I do. I know that all the wheelchair racers in Barcelona do train as hard as the able-bodied.

Every time I go out and train with a cerebral palsy athlete in a wheelchair who starts a 400 meter run and finishes at the 200meter mark. I have to scratch my head at that. If you train for a 400m you know you don't stop at 200m.

There's a huge, huge gap between some of the athletes and others at disabled events and that is what I object to. People are going to World Championships and are coming home with medals when there are only 2 people in the event .

The women's shot put for the blind in Berlin was a prime example of this. Lliana Lujubisic is a B1, she got bumped up to a B2 and still won the discus and came 2nd in the shot. Where is LJ's disability if she can go out and beat a whole class above her?

Look at amputee sprinter Rob Snoek. He is in the sprint events, but he is no sprinter. He just doesn't have the build or the genetics of a sprinter. People find it difficult to take seriously a sport that involves people who look like they don't look right for the event.

There too many athletes competing in as many events as humanly possible. The field athletes at the Commonwealth Games don't throw the three throws. Every standing Cerebral Palsy athlete I know throws in every throwing event. Every blind thrower throws three implements, to be that all around is silly. The days in non disabled sports are long gone where you can do that and it is time the athletes with disabilities started doing the same thing.

It is entirely possible for the other disability groups to catch up with wheelchair sports in a few years. Until then I don't think we should have official events in the Olympics because we don't have the able bodied competing. We have to go through a final maturing process before we can have an official event . None of the other disability groups can do that because of the nature of their disabilities. I don't know if any of the other groups can present a logical argument why they should be at the Olympics. Everyone seems to talk about why a disabled person should be at the Olympics. There is nothing stopping the athletes competing at local twilight meets. They should have the exact same opportunities the 5ft 2 neighbour has to go to the Olympics. I disagree on the right to progress past my neighbour who also has equally disadvantaged circumstances.