Marla runyan olympics closing

By JERE LONGMAN

Runyan suffers from a degenerative condition of the retina called Stargardt's disease, which has left her with a hole in the center of her vision. She has 20-300 vision in one eye, 20-400 in the other. She cannot see the tape at the finish line of the metric mile. She cannot read a stopwatch or watch a replay of her races without pressing her face several inches from the television. She wears contacts and can see the track beneath her feet with peripheral vision, but her competitors are visible to her as shards of color and smudged faces and gauzy hairstyles.

Despite her impairment, Runyan has an encouraging chance at the Olympic track and field trials in July to become the first legally blind athlete to make an American team for the Winter or Summer Games. She has a chance to make the team at 800 meters, 1,500 meters or 5,000 meters. Runyan began running the 1,500 meters only last year but posted a personal best of 4 minutes 5.27 seconds; anything under 4 minutes is considered a very fast time, and only three runners in the world broke the 4-minute mark last year. Runyan also finished fourth at the 1999 national championships, first at the Pan American Games and 10th at the world championships in Seville, Spain.

She is one of the country's most versatile athletes, having fini

SACRAMENTO — Marla Runyan qualified for her first Olympic team by finishing third in the women’s 1,500 meters in the U.S. track and field trials at Cal State Sacramento before 23,503 Sunday.

The fact that she became the first legally blind U.S. athlete in any sport to do so was just icing on the cake for the former heptathlete who nearly pulled out of the trials because a tendon injury in her left leg prevented her from running from early June until July 8.

“My vision is just a circumstance that happened,” Runyan said. “I never looked at it as a barrier. I never thought, ‘I want to be the first legally blind Olympian.’ I just wanted to make an Olympic team. Me. Marla.”

Runyan, a 1986 graduate of Camarillo High, has been legally blind since she was 9 years old because of a degenerative condition called Stargardt’s Disease that deteriorates the retinas.

Her peripheral vision is fine, but she sees only “shapes” in her main field of vision.

Despite that, she finished 10th in the heptathlon in the 1996 Olympic trials in Atlanta.

Disappointed with that performance, she focused on the 800--the final event of the heptathlon--in 1997 and ’98 before bursting onto the national scene in the 1,500 last year by winning the Pan American Games and finishing 10th in the World Championships at Seville, Spain.

She won the 3,000 in the USA Track & Field indoor championships in March and ran 15:07.66 in the 5,000 in May to move to ninth on the all-time U.S. performer list. But she strained the tendon that runs from her left knee to her hip June 8 when she jumped out of the way of a child on a bicycle while running on a trail near her home in Eugene, Ore. The injury wasn’t career- or even season-threatening, but it came at a time when Runyan could ill afford to stop running.

She did intensive pool workouts in an effort to maintain her cardiovascular fitness during her time away from the track, but nearly pulled out

Blind runner qualifies for Olympics
Rob Gloster (AP)

17 July 2000 – Sacramento, California - Marla Runyan has completed her heroic odyssey from Paralympic champion to Olympic qualifier, overcoming blindness and a serious leg injury to become the first blind athlete to qualify for a U.S. Olympic team.

Runyan raised her arms in triumph Sunday as she finished third in the women's 1500 metres, crossing a finish line that she can see only as a blur.

"I never said I want to be the first legally blind runner to make the Olympics. I just wanted to be an Olympian,'' Runyan said after her victory. "I think my vision is just a circumstance that happened and I don't look at it as a barrier.''

Runyan, 31, has a degenerative retina condition that allows her to see only peripherally and reduces other runners to streaks of light. She has had Stargardt's Disease since she was a child, and while lenses help, they only correct her vision so far, from 20-800 to about 20-300.

Her victory Sunday puts her on the women's team running this fall in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. According to the U.S. Association of Blind Athletes, she is the first legally blind athlete to qualify for a U.S. Olympic team in any sport.

Runyan, who lives in Eugene, Oregon, has competed in track events since her youth. In 1992, she competed in the Paralympics and won the 100, 200, 400 and long jump, and she won the pentathlon in the 1996 Paralympics. She tried out for the 1996 Olympic Games but fell short of qualifying, finishing 10th in the heptathlon.

Since then, she has focused exclusively on middle-distance running.

For Runyan, the more pressing concern this year has been a recent leg injury that prevented her from running for five weeks until Friday's first-round heats of the 1500m. She had injured tendons in the leg when she jumped out of the way of a child on a bicycle.

The injury was so bad she considered pulling out of th

The last day of the Para athletics programme at the Stade de France on Saturday morning (7 September) could not have got off to a better start as Brazil’s Rayane Soares smashed a 29-year-old world record to win the women’s 400m T13 gold.

Soares clocked 53.55 to grab her second medal at Paris 2024 – after a silver in the 100m T13. The previous mark (54.46) was set by USA’s Marla Runyan in January 1995 in Los Angeles, home to the next Paralympics.

Runyan is a Para athletics legend who won five Paralympic gold medals between Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996, and then went on to compete at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games – finishing eight in the women’s 1500m final.

"I had trust in myself that I could finish in a good time - that is what I've trained for,” Soares said. “To get this result in a competition, at the Paralympics, that's what has surprised me, due to all the anxiety and fear that I feel.” 

"I don't like lane eight and, last night, when I found out I was going to be in lane eight, it was very difficult to sleep. I was nervous, my heart was beating fast."

There was also a world record for Uzbekistan as Uzbekistan’s Nurkhon Kurbanova took gold in the women’s javelin F54. And James Turner of Australia grabbed “redemption” for a messed up start in Tokyo as he ran a Paralympic record to add the men’s 100m T36 gold to his 400m victory.

The women’s shot put F40 saw another first-time Paralympic champion with Lara Baars of the Netherlands setting a Paralympic record on her way to gold (9.10m).

Here are all medallists of the morning session at Stade de France on 7 September.

Men's Long Jump - T13 Final
Gold: Orkhan Aslanov (Azerbaijan)
Silver: Isaac Jean-Paul (USA)
Bronze: Paulo Henrique Andrade dos Reis (Brazil)

Men's Shot Put - F34 Final
Gold: Mauricio Valencia (Colombia)
Silver: Azeddine Nouiri (Morocco)
Bronze: Ahmad Hindi (Jordan)

Women's Javelin Throw - F54 Final