At the risk of branding myself a contrarian, I feel compelled to render a reality check on Charles Robinson's Yahoo! Sports blog, Team Canada Ruins McKeever's Dream.
For every egoic force, there is a counter-force. This is called karma. This is what the Canadian cross-country skier Brian McKeever is going through right now. McKeever, who is legally blind, was bumped from today's 50 kilometer marathon, in favor of faster skiers.
This may sound like an odd situation, but here's how it went down. Canada is not normally strong in cross-country skiing. So they fielded a team giving the widest number of skiers the chance to participate. So their best skiers are not necessarily scheduled to ski in every race.
But hold on, over the course of the Vancouver games, Team Canada has posted now six top-ten finishes in cross-country events. New coach Inge Braten made the uncontroversial decision to change the line-up for today's marathon, fielding those he considers his best four skiers (the maximum allotment), thinking, Hey! We could medal here!
This bumped McKeever from the race.
Here's the karma part. McKeever is legally blind. He has just 1o% of his vision left, as a result of a hereditary condition called Stargardt disease. That 10% is all peripheral vision.
I wouldn't wish this condition on anyone, it's an awful fate. But for cross-country skiing, if you have peripheral vision, that's enough. The fact that McKeever's can race just fine without a guide is proof of that. So his impairment has no impact on his ability to ski . . . right?
Meanwhile, he cleaned up in medals at both the 2002 and 2006 Paralympic Games. Perhaps if you can win in both the Olympics and the Paralympics, that in and of itself should indicate a fairness issue.
No doubt, McKeever is a stellar guy. I certainly wish him no ill will. His case is not unusual.
In an almost mechanical way, what goes around inevitably comes back around. For everyone, even people with disabilities. The ego's need to feel special veritably dictates that this will be the case.
I can only imagine some of the Paraolympians McKeever displaced as a result of his success there grumbling to themselves what cannot be said, given the feel-good nature of his story: "McKeever is getting what he deserves." (And this too, of course, is ego.)
The law of karma grants us all the dignity of equal treatment, just as Brian McKeever's coach did for him in making this most obvious of game-time decisions.
Photo credit: rtve.es
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