ESPN Recognizes Achievements of Athletes with Disabilities

By Joan Leotta

Sports competitors look to ESPN's ESPY awards as the pinnacle of sports achievement. The annual ESPY event honors the best individual and team achievements in sports over the past year. In the ten years that the ESPY awards have been presented, the number of categories has grown to 34, recognizing not only skills in particular sports but also intangible attitudes, as exemplified by the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. For the first time this year, the ESPYs included a category to recognize athletes with disabilities.

Said Josh Krulewitz, ESPN Director, Media Relations, "Our mission with the ESPY is to serve all sports fans—and this includes fans of athletes with disabilities." New categories this year also reflected other interests dictated by the sensibilities of sports fans. "We also added 'Best Sports Movie' and 'Best Outdoors Sports Athlete,'" Krulewitz relates, "to reflect our recognition of the broad range of interests that go into making a sports fan."

Nomination Process

Determining who would be the nominees for each category is a year-long exercise. For the category of best athlete with a disability as for others, Krulewitz noted, "Our criterion was simply to pick someone who was outstanding."

A nomination panel compiled names throughout the year. Once the nominees were determined, the network assembled a committee to determine the winner. As with the sports movie category, ESPN recognized that the usual panel of sports writers and former athletes might not have enough expertise in this category.

One of ESPN's vice presidents, Steve Raymond, has a long history of working with disabled athletes. Said Krulewitz, "Raymond lives in Colorado and has a pretty good connection to the community. He led the way for us. He began to compile a list, do the research and consult with others knowledgeable in the disability community to come up with the June list of nominees in June. Then it was time to determine which of those three outstanding athletes would be the winner for 2002."Some of the contacts who helped with the ESPN selection process were Kirk Bauer, Executive Director of Disabled Sports, USA; Charles Hubner, Director of the USA Paralympics; Andy Fleming of the US Disabled Athletes Fund; Cliff Crase, Editor of Sports and Spokes magazine; and Randy Snow, a paralympic athlete with medals in three different sports.

Nominees for the category were Steve Pate, Sarah Will, and Erik Weihenmayer. Pate, who has Gullian Barre syndrome, won the gold medal in wheelchair rugby winner at the Paralympic Games in Sydney in 2000. A member of the USA wheelchair rugby team for 2002, Pate was also athlete of year for wheelchair sports in 2001.

Sarah Will achieved a sweep for the Alpine skiing category at the 2002 Paralympics, winning four-time gold. Paralyzed after a ski accident in 1988, Will returned to the sport and excelled as a monoskier. She is a current member of the US disabled ski team.

Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind man to scale Mt Everest, was the third nominee and winner of the category. Weihenmayer was born with a rare genetic disease, retinoschisis, that left him totally blind at age 13.

Weihenmayer was named the winner at the July 10 ceremony. An experienced mountain climber, Weihenmayer had already climbed four of the Seven Summits (the tallest peaks on each of the seven continents before his Everest ascent. His recent book, Touch the Top of the World, takes the reader through his struggles in life as well as in mountaineering.

Weihenmayer, who married his wife, Ellie Reeve, atop Mount Kilimanjaro in 1997, has described his goal in climbing Everest as "not just to stick a blind person on top like a sack of potatoes but to prove a blind person can be a part of a real team. You're a climber first and a blind person second."

A Welcome Addition to the ESPY Lineup

Weihenmayer's appearance during the ESPY's annual Parade of Champions garnered enormous applause. "The positive crowd reaction that night was one sign of the positive feeling of the community of sports fans to the award category and Weihenmayer himself," said Krulewitz, who noted that the category will probably remain a part of the awards lineup.

More positive reaction to the inclusion of the category has come in from many fronts. ESPN had recognized athletes with disabilities in its programming in other ways over the years, through support for the Special Olympics and special telecasts on individual athletes or events that featured athletes with disabilities.

Krulewitz noted that the Center for the Study of Sports in Society has been a supporter of including athletes with disabilities in the award process. "A lot of mainstream athletes and groups we generally deal with had an appreciation for the inclusion of this category and expressed that positively," said Krulewitz. "It made a lot of sense for us to do it. The addition was universally encouraged and the excitement over the award enjoyed by the audience as well as by our advertisers and the entire sports community. We consider the addition a positive step for us at ESPN as well as for the audience."

For these reasons, said Krulewitz, "We will most likely continue to include this category, Best Disabled Athlete, to present this aspect of the world of sports to our fans."

General Motors and Morgan Stanley were the corporate sponsors of the 10th annual ESPY awards, which were held in July at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. Krulewitz reports that this new venue did not need to make any changes to accommodate the disabled nominees and fans.