Amputees who survived the Boston bombing gathered at the Harvard Athletic fields to learn how to run on their prosthetic legs on Sunday morning. The event was witnessed by their families, physical therapists, and volunteers.
The Challenged Athletes Foundation, an organization helping amputees and disabled people to participate in sports, organized this event to bring together all the amputees, whether be them marathon victims or wounded in the military.
Coach Bob Gailey put them through a series of increasingly complicated drills, and then arranged them up for the highlight of the day which is the obstacle course.
Two-time Boston marathon winner Joan Benoit Samuelson told Boston.com at the start of the clinic, “The most inspiring stories are at the back of the pack. Our motto is ‘There is no finish line.’ There are always more challenges out there. You people who came out today are the spokesmen for those challenges.”
Through the race, skilled participants match up in a relay race, some runners fall, some had trouble weaving through the cones or stepping around the ropes, but at the end, everyone cheered.
“It’s inspiring. It’s very enlightening to see them coming and to see they’re overcoming that. It helps me, too, to work through it. I don’t say, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’ I say, ‘How can I be more like them,” said David Driscoll, a doctor who was working at the marathon’s finish line medical tent on race day. His son, Brendan, was born with an incomplete tibia and fibula.
The prosthetic legs were fitted according to the needs of each recipient.
The Knights of Columbus, which provided prosthetics for victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, lent their helping hands to the marathon victims acquire running legs or other prosthetics that help them live a normal life again.
