Grudgingly, she sat in her wheelchair, yearning for the swelling in her legs
to go down. The doctors advised her that it might take weeks, weeks she knew
she did not have. To maintain her focus, she wrote down her goal on the face
of her mobile phone and on the screen-saver of her computer – “Seven Golds”,
as if looking at the words would hasten her recovery. One day she ignored
the doctors, her family and just about everybody else and climbed out of the
chair. “Training camp ahead of the [International Paralympic Committee]
swimming world championships in Durban was just over a week away,” Jessica
Long recalled with a smile. “The swelling was still there, but I had one
thing on my mind: to get into my legs and start walking fast.”
The 15-year-old bilateral below-knee amputee from Baltimore, Maryland, won the
seven gold medals she had visualised, along with two more – an unprecedented
nine-gold haul that featured solo world-record times in the 100m freestyle,
400m freestyle, 100m butterfly and 200m individual medley. Her efforts were
recognised last month when, ahead of Michael Phelps, who dominated this
year’s world swimming championships in Melbourne with seven golds, she was
presented with the Sullivan Award as the outstanding amateur athlete in the
US, the first Paralympian to be thus honoured. Long is sure to be one of the
stars of the Paralympic World Cup, which begins tomorrow in Manchester.
“I just thought I’d get to meet Michael, that’s all I was hoping for,” she
said on a family holiday in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, where deer
grazed outside their rented house. “My mind kept going back to the days last
August when I was recovering from surgery on my knees and I was sat in a
wheelchair. It killed me, but it also made me appreciate . . . I mean, I
know that I’m missing half my legs, but you begin to appreciate the good
part a lot more.”
Her father, Steve, chuckled when reminded of her indomitable will to be ready
for South Africa. “Jess has had seven or eight corrective surgeries on each
leg because the bone is very sharp. Once it even punctured her skin and she
had to be in a wheelchair for two or three weeks, but other than that, she
has rarely used a wheelchair. We don’t even own one,” he said. “When she
first had the amputations [at 18 months] we had a small wheelchair for her,
but even then she was determined to get in and out of it herself and she
didn’t much like when we pushed it. When her legs were amputated they fitted
her right there in the recovery room with little prosthetic legs and she
learnt to walk with those. They gave us a telephone number for a physical
therapist, but she was up and walking before we made the call. After we got
her a stroller which she could hold on to, using it like a walker, she
learnt to walk on her own. She’s always had that determination.
“Whenever she tried to do something and couldn’t, she had a tendency to get
really upset. I always remember this time she was in a wheelchair at Ocean
City and it hit a crack in the boardwalk and she fell out. Jess was maybe
six or seven years old and we knew she didn’t want us to help her. She
wasn’t hurt, but everybody on the boardwalk was looking at this little girl
who had fallen out of her wheelchair and they were looking at her mother
[Beth] and I, who were leaving her to climb back in by herself. We must have
looked like awful parents, but we knew she would have got mad at us. She
would be mad at herself for needing the help and you could see this
determination from a very young age.”
When Steve Long first set eyes on his little girl she was lying in a cot with
two other babies in an orphanage in Irkutsk, one of the largest cities in
Siberia. The depressing building seemed to be in constant semi-darkness. The
plumbing did not work, so there were hosepipes in the toilets and pots tied
to each crib, which the babies sat on constantly because they had no nappies
and the carers were too few to see to all of their needs. Some of the
windows were broken and boarded-up, yet the beauty with which the Baltimore
designer was confronted proved overwhelming. Long and his wife had two
children but were told they would be unable to have more, so they had
decided on adoption. At a meeting for parents who had adopted children from
South America, somebody mentioned to Beth that they had heard of a baby in
Russia who needed a home because she had some difficulties with her legs.
Her fibulas, ankles, heels and most of the bones in her feet, which
protruded from the back of her legs, had never formed and she was
desperately in need of surgery, yet it was her “short, blonde hair and
pretty face” that shone through when Long first held her in his arms. He
also brought back Joshua, who was born with a cleft lip and palate, to their
home and the two additions were assimilated into their family life.
A bundle of energy, Jessica gravitated towards sport, which her parents
believed would provide the perfect outlet for her exuberance. “I was four
when I took up gymnastics, but the jumps and flips became painful to do on
prosthetic legs, so I would take them off, but the [instructors] thought
this would be too hard on my knees,” she said. “I loved gymnastics and I
still like trampolining and I’ve tried other sports like ice skating and
rollerblading. I play tennis, golf and basketball too, I ride a bike and
I’ve skied for three years. My legs were more ‘pop on, pop off’ then, so
with the skis and heavy shoes they would often fall off. The first time I
went for lessons I sat down on the lift and before I had time to do anything
my legs fell out and stayed at the bottom of the slope while I kept going.
I’ve got better at the lift thing because my legs don’t keep falling off any
longer.”
At times she would become self-conscious when people stared at her artificial
limbs, but cheerleading helped her self-esteem and she wears short skirts
and shorts now, like any other teenage girl. “In the summer especially my
legs sweat and slip out and it’s not very comfortable, so I like to take my
legs off and roam free,” she explained. “My parents get concerned that I
could do damage to my knees, and I’ve cut big chunks out of them from
walking on sticks in the ground or jagged pieces of rock, but it doesn’t
stop me. It’s like being able to take off a pair of shoes and relax. It
hurts sometimes, but that doesn’t stop me. I’ve even taken part in a
rock-climbing competition in Florida. I feel I can do what I want to do and
I’ve felt this way since I was little.”
Jessica was 10 when she first made a splash in her grandparents’ swimming pool
but was quickly taking it seriously when she began to compete against
able-bodied swimmers. “I am just in awe of Jessica,” her coach, Stephanie
Weisenborn, said at the time. “You don’t know she’s a double amputee until
she gets out of the pool.”
Because of the reduced strength in her legs, most of her propulsion has to be
generated by her arms and upper body. Every time she turns and pushes off
with her knees, she loses ground. But she was adept enough at freestyle to
win three golds at the Paralympic Games in Athens in 2004 before adding the
breaststroke and butterfly to her repertoire to win five at the US
Paralympics Open swimming championships 12 months later. Although she did
not turn 15 until February, she has set 14 individual world records.
“I want to break a couple more [records] in Manchester, where I’ll be
competing in the 100m fly and the 100m free. I’m going to do it no matter
what,” she predicted. “I watched some tapes a couple of weeks ago which my
grandma took of me when I was younger before I had the [amputation] surgery,
so I was able to see what I looked like and how I walked. I was cute, but,
if you looked closely, you could see I was determined. When I got my new
legs after the surgery you could see me walking around like I wanted to do
it by myself. I didn’t want any help. I’ve always been determined and maybe
my story can be an inspiration to others, for I feel blessed. I don’t know
whatI might go on to do in my life butI know I’ll always give it my best.”
Her favourite T-shirt bears the inscription: “I’m a girl, I’m an athlete,
swimming is my sport, prepare to be humiliated.” It is tongue in cheek, but
it contains much truth.
Long joins the greats
The James E Sullivan Award is presented annually by the Amateur Athletic Union
to the best American athlete in the traditionally amateur sports. The fi rst
winner, in 1930, was Bobby Jones, the golfi ng legend who won the US Open and
The Open that year. It has since been won by many of the greats of American
sport, such as the athletes Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, right, Ed Moses and
Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the swimmers Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps, the diver
Greg Louganis and speed skater Eric Heiden, all of whom won multiple Olympic
gold medals.
While Jessica Long is the first Paralympic athlete to win the award, which she
received last month after prevailing over a shortlist that included Phelps,
the ice skater Sasha Cohen and college American football star Brady Quinn,
she is not the fi rst disabled star to do so. Jim Abbott, the winner in 1987,
pitched baseball in the major league despite having no right hand
