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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."
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