Amputee runs like the wind.
By Lisa Riley Roche Deseret Morning News
When the man billed as the world’s fastest amputee first took up track and field as a high school student in Tremonton, he was already planning on a career as a computer technician.
Now Marlon Shirley is a professional athlete who competes here and abroad on a high-tech sprinting prosthesis and is training full time for the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, with the goal of winning five gold medals.
He’s already won a gold and silver medal at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, Australia, and last June set a world record in the 100-meter dash at the Utah Summer Games, he became the first amputee to break the 11-second barrier.
Saturday, the 26-year-old participated in an invitational meet at the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns alongside able-bodied athletes from Utah universities and colleges. He won a 60-meter dash exhibition race and finished fourth in the 200-meter dash.
"That’s the fastest I’ve ever run," Shirley told his parents, Marlene and Kerry Shirley, who’d driven down from Tremonton to see their adopted son run the 200-meter dash in 22.45 seconds.
They haven’t seen much of him since he followed some friends to a high school track meet and was discovered by a coach for disabled athletes. Soon, the abandoned boy they’d taken into their home at 9 years old was training for the Paralympics.
Shirley uses a spring-like prosthesis for sprint races, developed by Scott Sabolich in Oklahoma City, and is based at the U.S. Olympic Committee training center in Chula Vista south of San Diego.
He lost his left foot at age 5 in a lawn-mower accident at a Nevada orphanage. Later, he lost more of his leg due to a high school football injury.
Still, Shirley sees all athletes as his competition, not just those who are disabled.
"It’s not a matter of if I think I can, it’s how far take it," he said. "I haven’t even tapped into my ability yet."
His time of 10.97 seconds in the 100 earned him the 2003 ESPY Award as Best Disabled Athlete and the unofficial title of the fastest amputee in the world. Shirley said he is a role model for other amputees, showing them what is possible.
"It’s more awareness," he said. "They just don’t understand what can be done."
