From today’s NY Times…
By ALAN SCHWARZ
SAN DIEGO — As Kendall Bailey swims, his praying-mantis limbs flapping him forward, something about the water disguises his many maladies: cerebral palsy, mental retardation, autism and more. Only in a swimming pool do they dissolve and allow his troubled body and mind to be all but normal. He is happy, safe and possibly the fastest disabled breaststroker in the world.
“I’m going to the Paralympics,” Bailey told a waiter last week at his favorite restaurant, speaking of the Olympic Games for disabled athletes in Beijing this September. He wears his Team USA jersey everywhere, every day, and sleeps under an American-flag blanket, occasionally with the medals he has won around his neck. “I’m going to swim for the U.S.A.”
Listening to Bailey stumble through his words, his mother, Connie Shaw, wanted to smile and imagine her son swimming on behalf of his country. But she couldn’t. For two months, all she has been able to imagine is his dreams being dashed — perhaps even by the United States itself.
Mrs. Shaw has been left with questions similar to those of other parents who fight bureaucracies they think are interfering with their disabled children’s rights and dreams. Was U.S. Paralympics really trying to protect Kendall when it formally requested that he be rendered ineligible for the Beijing Games? Or did team officials file the appeal simply not wanting the distraction of handling a 6-foot-6-inch 19-year-old with an elementary-school mind and a nursery-school temperament?
Kendall Bailey is a rare case of a mentally disabled athlete who also has the physical disabilities to qualify him for the Paralympics. But in April, amid confusion about how disabled athletes are classified both before and during the Games, officials who oversee the American team on behalf of the United States Olympic Committee formally asked that Bailey be ruled ineligible.
Mrs. Shaw objected and had the request withdrawn, but was distraught over what United States team officials continued to describe to her as the strong possibility her son could be disqualified after arriving in China. Bailey’s local coach, Don Watkinds, feared the swimmer’s reaction: “Kendall would be uncontrollably enraged, or he might just crawl into a ball in the corner crying,” he said. “And he might never come out.”
The head of U.S. Paralympics, Charlie Huebner, who lodged the request to render Bailey ineligible, said in several interviews this week that he was merely “seeking clarification” of Bailey’s status so that his eligibility would be assessed before Beijing.
But David Grevemberg, who handled the matter for the International Paralympic Committee, said Monday that Bailey’s eligibility for the Paralympics was never a plausible issue, called the United States’ rationale “far-reaching,” and questioned its legitimacy altogether.
Only on Monday did Connie Shaw learn that United States officials were mistaken and her son was in no danger. She said she was relieved but also angry at having been terrified over nothing for two months. But she didn’t have to fear how it had affected Kendall.
He doesn’t know a thing.
“The one good thing in this whole nightmare,” Mrs. Shaw said, “is that Kendall doesn’t have any idea of what’s going on.”
A Lifetime of Challenges
At first glance, Kendall Bailey could be just a desperately awkward teenager needing to grow into his body. Only 175 pounds cling to his lanky frame, and he less walks than lopes. Somewhere between a newborn foal and a condor, he calmly gobbles three to four stairs in a stride.
But Bailey’s body is more than just gangly. Cerebral palsy leaves him with gross motor impairment, overactive reflexes and hypotonia, or virtually no muscle tone. (Look closely, and on many steps his feet collapse inside his loose sneakers and he walks almost on his ankles.) Klinefelter’s syndrome keeps his body from producing testosterone.
Bailey’s mental disabilities and autism are far more noticeable. He has the attention span of a small child — at one moment during lunch near his home in La Jolla, he clawed his spoon through his oatmeal, completely consumed with the process, and the next he was drawn intensely to the window behind him: “Look at that bird right there! I want to take him home.” He is terrified of most strangers and unfamiliar settings, occasionally fleeing rooms or crawling under tables.
Is he excited to be going to Beijing?
“Yeah,” he said at the beachside restaurant.
How is his training going?
“Good. A lot of big waves out there.”
What does he like about swimming?
“I’m eating right now.”
Bailey goes to a life-skills school Monday through Friday, learning to cook and perhaps take care of himself someday. A counselor spends eight hours a week with him working on mental relaxation exercises and social interaction. He loves playing golf, occasionally reads the sports pages and laughs hysterically at Scooby-Doo. He alternates between being a clumsily communicative fifth-grader and an intractable toddler.
Bailey loves fetching Gatorade for his fellow swimmers and has been known to run beside the pool with a teammate’s prosthetic legs so they’d be handy at the finish. He generally keeps to himself, but he can get on his training partners’ nerves. Last week, as an 8-year-old boy did pull-ups, Bailey stood about four inches away and drawled, “You’re not doing it right.”
“Back off, Kendall,” said the boy, half Bailey’s size and less than half his age. Bailey barely budged, staring down through his glasses as the boy tried to ignore him.
Bailey’s problems were only gradually evident to Mrs. Shaw in the months and years after Bailey, her third adopted child, was born in El Paso. He had endured a difficult delivery and spent his first 10 days in intensive care because of an infection, but emerged apparently healthy. Within three months, Mrs. Shaw could tell that something was wrong.
“When you picked him up, he was like a rag doll,” she said. “There just wasn’t much there. And just the way he moved as he grew — 3 months, 4 months — he did things differently.”
Intense physical and speech therapy for cerebral palsy helped — Bailey wore corrective shoes and ankle braces to learn to walk until he was 5 — but by then he was exhibiting other eccentricities, particularly behavioral ones. He was terribly nervous and uncomfortable all the time — except when he was in water. Only there was he calm. In fact, he so craved the feeling of being enveloped that when he became hysterical he would lie in an empty backyard kiddie pool while his parents poured gallon after gallon of rice over his limbs and chest.
If Bailey went to a noisy restaurant, he was known to run out and climb to the top of a tree. “A 30-foot tree, like a cat hanging on a limb,” his mother said.
After Mrs. Shaw divorced and moved Bailey to San Diego eight years ago, Bailey rode the bus to his new school and refused to get off. When the principal climbed aboard to cajole him, Bailey bolted out the door, scaled the side of the school and sought refuge on the roof, from which he threw pebbles at the strangers below.
Although she had two older children of her own and three more by her new marriage, Mrs. Shaw made taking care of Bailey her full-time job, driving him to the special-needs programs of conventional schools and working with his various therapists.
Bailey tried to play organized sports with able-bodied children, but he was hopelessly uncoordinated. He played catcher in T-ball because he didn’t have to throw, and because the heavy protective equipment felt good. Play often stopped because his arm and hand were too weak to support the catcher’s mitt.
“It kept falling off into the dirt,” said his stepfather, Roland Shaw. “The first time he won a running race, he just kept running and running, kind of like Forrest Gump. He didn’t really understand that the race was over. He just kept running. He was so happy.”
Faster and Faster
It was in San Diego that Mrs. Shaw discovered Mr. Watkinds, a swimming coach who welcomed children with or without disabilities. Bailey arrived with little more than a frenetic dog paddle, but with a sense for the water that Mr. Watkinds immediately recognized and cultivated.
“I think swimming always suited him because he doesn’t interact with people in the water — he can isolate himself in his own little world,” Mr. Watkinds said, watching Bailey practice last week at a local recreation center. “And the flow of the water around his arms and legs, it just feels good to him — and the faster he goes, the better it feels.”
Bailey did go faster and faster. His long and lean body started to slice through the water like a college crew boat, making up for his muscle weakness and coordination deficits. His floppy ankles were perfect for the breaststroke, where the feet are rotated outward for maximum thrust. After a lifetime of sports failure, he started winning Paralympic-sanctioned races, beaming from the medal stand with a self-esteem that had gone untapped his entire life.
Held two weeks after the Olympics in the same host city, the Paralympics are for athletes with physical disabilities like amputated limbs, paralysis and cerebral palsy. It is a serious competition for medals and sponsorship dollars, yet often confused with the Special Olympics — a far less competitive event for people with mental disabilities like Down syndrome.
Bailey always qualified for Paralympic races because of his cerebral palsy and other physical disabilities. Last year, after a challenge by another country, he was classified briefly as only intellectually disabled — therefore ineligible for Paralympic competition — but Mrs. Shaw appealed and I.P.C. inspectors reclassified him in December as physically disabled and cleared him for the Paralympics.
Bailey was still a long shot to make the United States Paralympic team before formal trials this April. His fastest meet time in the 100-meter breaststroke (1 minute 23.6 seconds) had been six seconds slower than the minimum required for consideration. But he blitzed through the water in 1:15.8 — winning the race, shocking the field and breaking his classification’s United States record.
The next day, a ceremony officially named Bailey to the United States Paralympic team and gave him his U.S.A. jersey. Bailey wore that jersey on the plane ride home and — quite out of character — informed strangers he would swim in China in the Paralympics, even though he really didn’t know what China was. He showed them his medals. He signed autographs. No one had ever seen him anywhere near that proud.
The United States Protest
A few weeks later, having to plan for Beijing, Mrs. Shaw telephoned the U.S. Paralympics office and spoke with the head coach of the swimming team, Julie O’Neill. Ms. O’Neill told Mrs. Shaw that Bailey’s classification was again an issue, and that U.S. Paralympics had approached the I.P.C. to clarify the matter.
That inquiry consisted of a formal, six-page appeal by Mr. Huebner, the chief of U.S. Paralympics. It opened:
“Mr. Kendall Bailey, an athlete who is a citizen of the USA and eligible to represent the USA in international competition, is inappropriately classified to compete in International Paralympic Committee (IPC) swimming competition. Mr. Bailey is intellectually disabled. The intellectual disability classification for swimming (S14) is not presently recognized by the IPC; nor is an intellectually disabled swimmer eligible to compete under the IPC Swimming Functional Classification System.”
The document claimed that “procedural errors” with Bailey led to his incorrect classification as physically disabled. It did not request explanation for these alleged errors or a review of the procedures. Under “relief sought,” the appeal requested that the I.P.C. “nullify” Bailey’s physical-disability status and render him ineligible for Paralympic competition.
“Everything Kendall had worked so hard for, in 10 days, it was all taken away,” Mrs. Shaw said. “Everything became such a struggle from then on — against the U.S.O.C. trying to get him ineligible, and the struggle to keep Kendall from finding out.”
Mr. Huebner said in several interviews this week that he lodged his appeal to clarify Bailey’s status to ensure Bailey would not be subject to I.P.C. reconsideration or another country’s challenge upon his arrival. Said Mr. Huebner, “The worst thing that I can see happen to any athlete, and I’ve seen it in the past, is an athlete at the Games be told that they have been reclassified and they have to go home.” (Ms. O’Neill, reached by telephone as well, said she shared Mr. Huebner’s concerns and supported all the actions taken.)
Mr. Grevemberg, the I.P.C.’s executive director for sport and international federation relations, said in a telephone interview Monday that Bailey’s eligibility for the Paralympics was never truly endangered. He cited rules distributed to the U.S.O.C. early this year that state how no nation could lodge a protest against Bailey’s eligibility at the Games, and that the I.P.C. could step in only after a race and under “exceptional circumstances,” which Mr. Grevemberg said meant an egregious error in an athlete’s classification.
Mr. Grevemberg added that in his nine years at the I.P.C., he had no recollection of any nation filing a protest that expressly requested ineligibility for its own athlete.
“Now the question is, are they acting in the best interest of their athlete?” Mr. Grevemberg asked. “Are they acting in the best interest of their sport? They’re the only ones who can express their intention.”
Mr. Huebner and Ms. O’Neill reiterated that their sole intention for filing the appeal was to seek clarification. They said that Bailey’s intellectual disabilities and behavioral issues had no bearing on their decisions. “I don’t even know who Kendall Bailey is, to be honest,” Mr. Huebner said. “I’ve never met him. I don’t know him.”
Questions Linger
Bailey’s intellectual and behavioral issues would never be disputed. At lunch near the beach, he gave glimpses of the feeble desperation that he can feel even in the most familiar surroundings.
“Mom, can you put butter on my toast?”
“Why don’t you start out and if you get frustrated, I’ll help you.”
“Can you do it?”
“Just try it — you’re getting better all the time.”
“I don’t know how. Mom, please! I’ll pour the syrup while you do the butter. Mom!”
Mrs. Shaw incurred $25,000 in legal fees trying to get U.S. Paralympics to drop its appeal and to sort out the matter of her son’s eligibility. In an interview at her home on June 8, she burst into tears at the thought of Bailey being rendered ineligible in Beijing, which the United States had told her was very possible. “It could take him under for life,” she said. “I mean it could make him a whole different person.”
When informed on Monday afternoon that a top I.P.C. official had just said that her son had never been in any real danger, she said: “I can’t believe my ears. I just can’t believe it.”
Later, she doubted that U.S. Paralympics had acted out of malice — its officials devote their working lives to giving opportunities to disabled athletes — but out of ignorance of at least the rules and maybe more.
“Just because he has other issues, he’s been looked at in a whole different way that hasn’t been fair,” she said. “He’s been singled out and isolated because of his autism, because of his intellectual disability. If Kendall wasn’t autistic, would any of this have happened? Absolutely not.”
And so Kendall Bailey continues to train for the Beijing Paralympics, oblivious to the rancor that has surrounded him. Every weekday afternoon between 4 and 6, Bailey swims with Coach Don at the recreation center, dreaming of wearing that Team USA jersey into China and leaving with another medal around his neck.
Last Monday he jumped off the side of the pool, arms tight to his sides, as thin as a closed umbrella, and sliced through the water all the way to the bottom. There, he wiggled his limbs to get himself flat, and lay on the concrete floor in silence, like Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate,” for a good 10 or 15 seconds.
As usual, Bailey’s inner thoughts remained a mystery. Other swimmers’ ripples then crawled across the surface, leaving him all but invisible.
