Olympic bronze medallist Anjali Forber-Pratt hopes events like the Sun Run will lift her to gold
By Gary Kingston, Vancouver Sun
So when the American Educational Research Association's 2012 annual conference was scheduled for Vancouver April 13-17, the timing couldn't have worked out any better.
As if being a Paralympic medallist isn't achievement enough, Forber-Pratt also holds a PhD in human resource education.
Knowing she'd be in town for the conference, the athlete contacted a B.C. team coach about finding a location to train.
He said, "Hey, the Sun Run is on then, why not do it."
"I said, 'That sounds like a great idea.' I'd heard all about the Sun Run before ... so I'm very excited," Forber-Pratt said in a recent interview.
Forber-Pratt, who races in the T53 division, won a pair of bronze medals in Beijing in the 400 metres and 4x100 relay and had a tremendous 2011 season, capturing 200-metre gold in world-record time at the world championships, plus silver medals in the 100 and 400.
"Over the last four years, I've made a rise up in the ranks and now I'm chasing that Paralympic gold. My eyes are on that prize and on the world record in the 100."
Forber-Pratt's story, however, is about far more than racing. It's one of a remarkable young woman - she is 27 - with a deep passion to motivate those with a disability, particularly youngsters, and to educate others to create a world more physically and socially accepting of those who face challenges as a result of disability.
Born and orphaned in Calcutta, India, Anjali was adopted when she was three months old by a couple in Natick, Mass. Almost immediately, she was stricken with transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder that damages the spinal cord. She nearly died and was left paralyzed from the waist down.
At age five, while positioned on the side of the Boston Mara-thon course near her home, she saw a wheelchair racer zip by. It was, she says, a life-changing moment. Her parents found her a program for kids with disabilities. She tried everything, from alpine skiing to wheelchair tennis to swimming, before settling on wheelchair racing.
The wheelchair track program at the University of Illinois allowed her to combine sports with education as she earned bachelor and master's degrees in speech and hearing science, finishing in the top three per cent in her class. In March, she became Dr. Forber-Pratt after earning her PhD. At the AERA conference, she'll present two papers, one on the influence of gangs on bullying in middle school and another on the influence of disability on bullying.
She has co-authored a children's colouring book: All About Sports: for Athletes with Physical Disabilities, serves on the boards of Disabled Sports USA and Wheelchair Sports USA and has helped the Inter-national Paralympic Commit-tee with grassroots programs in Ghana and Bermuda.
"Sport can be a catalyst for social change, particularly in countries where people with disabilities are just written off."
She says places like Ghana have few policies to protect people with disabilities or to even get them access to schools. The IPC can help create opportunities, she says, but real, sustainable change has to come from within.
She also noted the IPC's "ridiculously convoluted documents" on policies, classification and process can be a challenge - a problem she's tried to minimize by paring down the language to make it more understandable.
In 2006, she visited India for the first time since her adoption.
"I was at an age where I finally started to care about my roots. I'd long ago come to terms with the fact I wouldn't connect with my biological family since there are no records or anything like that," said Forber-Pratt, who visited again in 2009 with her brother Ian, also adopted from India, spending time at a small orphanage and at boarding schools for blind and deaf boys. "But there are ways you can embrace the culture and the country and have it still be a part of your identity. It is very much a part of who I am. I'm starting to figure out how that could fit into my mission and what it is that I do." Forber-Pratt - who will do one other road race before the Olympics, the Peachtree Road Race 10K in Atlanta in July - says races like the Sun Run and the Boston and Chicago marathons are great ways to spread the message about the ability of those with disabilities.
"It speaks volumes in terms of education. Unless you see it, you don't understand. It really helps further the mission of the Paralympic movement."
gkingston@vancouversun.com
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