Sport: Heroism, Hugs and Laughter

It was hot, the hot kind of hot Indiana hot weather that sends the family dog scrooching under the pickup truck to enjoy the shade. But in South Bend, on the Notre Dame and St. Mary's College campuses, heroic athletes from 70 countries were running and jumping and laughing from the sheer joy of it all. No, these were not the Pan American Games, which were to start a few days later, downstate at Indianapolis. The competitors there, everyone knew, would run faster and jump higher. But not happier; world happiness records were being set here at the Seventh International Summer Special Olympics.

At the Notre Dame gym, lean, well-conditioned gymnasts are performing difficult maneuvers on the flying rings and the parallel bars. Obviously, they are athletes. No first-time observer of this Olympics for the mentally handicapped would wonder why they are competing. At the gym's other end, however, the scene takes the first-timer farther from the familiar, with a floor exercise called "rhythmic ribbons." One by one, young women, most of them shaped by the rough hand of Down's syndrome and all of limited physical ability, walk or run slowly over a patterned course, swirling a long ribbon tied to the end of a stick. Is that all there is to it? Yes. Except that Down's people tend to be short, and short-limbed, and sometimes awkward, the newcomer reflects, and the swirling ribbon is a marvelous way for such teenagers to be graceful, to dance. Any lack of comprehension is swept away as these seven athletes stand on the victory platform to receive their medals and roses. They are so happy, so gloriously pleased to be alive, that passersby watch in astonishment. The rarity they are seeing is momentary, only a flash, but it is beauty.

Out on the not-quite-melted running track, Alice Miller, 67, of South Bend, is hard at work under the hot sun. She is a lean, quick-smiling grandmother with cottony white hair, and what she does is hug. When an athlete here finishes an event, he or she gets a hug -- that's a rule, one that might be expanded to the wider world, and Alice is great at it, having practiced on four children and eleven grandchildren.

Some of the athletes are near collapse at the end of long races in the high- 90s heat, and medics cool the runners down with towels soaked in ice water. But Eric Tosada, a springy 18-year-old track man from Puerto Rico, doesn't even bother to sit down after clicking off 3,000 meters in 9 min. 38 sec., a new world record for Special Olympians. (The overall world record is 7 min. 32.01 sec.) He bounces around delightedly, and comes to prideful attention when his picture is taken. Another kind of athletic accomplishment is that of George Kelsey of New Jersey, who cannot push with his arms and so maneuvers his wheelchair by reversing it and shoving it along backward, with his left toe, through the 30-meter slalom course. His face is twisted with effort, but he too is laughing with joy as he finishes.