30 Reasons to celebrate, honor, and applaud the Special Olympics.

"Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt."

-The Special Olympic athlete’s oath

In case you missed it, the Special Olympics just descended on the city of Los Angeles this summer, wrapping up a spirited closing ceremony on August 2^nd after 8 epic days of competition. In all, it was by many counts the largest athletic event in the history of the city, included 500,00 spectators, $400 million pumped into the local economy, and athletes and coaches from 165 countries - to put it in context, the 1984 Summer Olympics only represented 140 countries.

With more than 25 sporting events including equestrian, judo, kayaking and roller skating, an astounding 27 world records were broken by the athletes. But the measure of success of the LA games and the Special Olympics goes far beyond records and medals, spectators and profits. So to really illustrate the lasting human impact, we came up with 50 reasons to celebrate, honor, and applaud the Special Olympics.

1.  The Special Olympics is the largest sports network in the world for children and adults with intellectual disabilities.

2.  The Special Olympics now provides training and competition all year round for more than 4.4 million special athletes in 180 countries.

3.  The Special Olympics isn’t just one event, but with a continuum of 70,000 competitions every year, there are local, regional, and national events on a daily basis all around the world.

4.  The training, events, and competitions are always free of charge for special athletes and their families.

5.  Competitions are open to athletes with intellectual disabilities 8 years old and up. But younger children don’t have to miss out, as children ages 2-7 with special needs can participate in the S.E. Young Athletes Program.

6.  Volunteerism is a fundamental part of the Special Olympics, not only from an operational standpoint, but because families, volunteers, event staff, and coaches often find their lives enriched by being around the athletes as much as the other way around.

7.  There are plenty of satellite events and fundraisers for volunteers to help support the special athletes, like the popular Law Enforcement Torch Run, which includes a torch passing and lighting ceremony.

8.  The Special Olympics has more than 32 Olympic-style individual or team sports:

Alpine Skiing

Aquatics

Badminton

Basketball

Beach Volleyball

Bocce

Bowling

Cricket

Cross-Country Skiing

Cycling

Equestrian Sports

Figure Skating

Floorball

Floor Hockey

Football (Soccer)

Golf

Gymnastics

Handball

Judo

Kayaking

Netball

Open Water (ocean) Swimming

Power lifting

Sailing

Short-track Speed skating

Snowboarding

Snowshoeing

Softball

Table Tennis

Tennis

Track and Field

Volleyball

9.  Events are organized so athletes of similar athletic abilities and function are placed in similar divisions.

10. Gold, silver, and bronze medals are awarded to the first, second, and third-place winners at each event, respectively, and the fourth through eight-place finishers are awarded ribbons.

11. There are plenty of celebrities and athletes, both professional and Olympic, who support the games. Those include:

Michael Phelps

Avril Lavigne

Bono

Dikembe Mutombo

Jackie Chan

Yao Ming

Nadia Comaneci

Vanessa Williams

Colin Farrell

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Michelle Kwan

Apolo Ohno

Scott Hamilton

Hannah Teter

12. Additionally, Princess Charlene of Monaco, Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Quincy Jones, and President Bill Clinton have played prominent roles as spokesmen or Global Ambassadors to the games.

13. Corporate sponsors and partners include Christmas Records Trust, the Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics®, The Coca-Cola Company, The Walt Disney Company and ESPN, Lions Clubs International, Mattel, P&G, Bank of America, Essilor Vision Foundation, the B. Thomas Golisano Foundation, Finish Line, The Safeway Foundation, and Safilo Group.

14. Where did it all start? Back in June of 1962, Eunice Kennedy Shriver formed a day camp for children with intellectual disabilities right at her home in Potomac, Maryland, because she wanted to make sure they had a place to play and flourish.

15. She hosted the camp the next summer, too, and soon Camp Shriver became an annual happening.

16. Her heart was in the right place but her motivation also lay close to home, since her oldest sister, Rosemary Kennedy, daughter of Rose Kennedy, had an intellectual disability, herself. Tragically, Rosemary had gone under the knife for a lobotomy, but the surgery caused brain damage.

17. Bolstered by funding from the Kennedy Foundation (Shriver was the executive vice president), grants were issued to community centers, rec departments, and universities to engage similar camps.

18. While Eunice Shriver had a lot to do with inspiring the Special Olympics, others were equally vital. In fact, a Canadian physical education professor from Ontario, Dr. Frank Hayden, demonstrated with his research that “persons with intellectual disabilities can and should participate in physical exercise,” a concept that seems elementary today, and that “the benefits of such activity would be seen in all areas of the athletes’ lives.”

So in 1968, Dr. Hayden set up the first ever organized sports program for people with intellectual disabilities, when a group of special athletes played floor hockey at a local school gym.

Dr. Hayden so believed in the cause and what he’d seen at that local gym, that he made the trip to Washington D.C. on his own dime, where he made the acquaintance of Rose Kennedy (who’s daughter, Rosemary was disabled) and pitched the idea for a bigger athletic event.

19. Around the same time, Anne McGlone Burke, a phys ed teacher from Chicago, received a Kennedy Foundation grant for her idea of a one-time athletic competition for people with intellectual disabilities, which would be modeled after the Olympics.

20. And so the first International Special Olympics Summer Games was coroneted at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1968. The one-day event saw 1,500 special athletes from the U.S. and Canada compete and have fun, thanks to sponsorship and organization by the Kennedy Foundation and Chicago Park District.

21. The event was such a success that Eunice Shriver announced the formation of the Special Olympics, which would expand to a wide array of sports and be hosted every two years.

22. In 1971, the U.S. Olympic Committee gave their blessing for the Special Olympics to use their namesake.  To this day, the Special Olympics is recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

23. The Special Olympics alternates between winter and summer games. The first Special Olympics World Winter Games was held in February 1977 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

24. The first Special Olympics World Summer Games held outside of the U.S. was hosted in Dublin, Ireland in 2003. It included 7,000 athletes from 150 countries competing in at least 18 events. They were the first games to have their own opening and closing ceremonies broadcast live, which included the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, who said it was “a time when Ireland was at its superb best."

25. President George W. Bush signed the Special Olympics Sport and Empowerment Act into Public Law 108-406 on October 30, 2004, which gives expanded funding for the games and programs.

26. Research over the years has confirmed that participating in the Special Olympics not only improves physical condition, lowering the rate of cardiovascular disease and obesity that is especially prevalent among disabled people, but bolsters emotional and psychological health, self-esteem, feelings of connection and meaning, and social skills.

27. One of the aims of the Special Olympics is to raise awareness and help erase stigmas through exposure to persons with disabilities. In 2008, the Special Olympics and Best Buddies International kicked off the Spread the Word to End the Word campaign, encouraging people to stop using the word “retarded” in our everyday lexicon.

28. In recent years, the Special Olympics has launched a movement called Unified Sports, where athletes with intellectual disabilities train, play, and compete along side and among athletes without disabilities. The concept has proven invaluable for all participants, fostering understanding, compassion, involvement, and erasing negative stereotypes. More than half a million people worldwide now participate in Unified Sports.

29. The official mission statement of the Special Olympics:

“The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community.”

30. The next games will be the S.E. World Winter Games, held in Graz and Schladming, Austria from March 14-25, 2017.

To get learn more, find out about Special Olympics in your area, or volunteer, you can go to www.SpecialOlympics.org.

Our top 10 U.S. Olympic moments of all time.

Muhammad Ali lights the Olympic Torch.  Atlanta, 1996.

Seeing Ali return as the elder statesman of sports, his body slowed by Parkinson’s but his spirit beloved by all, was a crowning moment that embodied the best of the Olympics regardless of nationality, religion, or race.  36 years earlier, at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, it was a young precocious Cassius Clay who threw fists and verbal jabs on his way to a gold medal in boxing’s light heavyweight division.  Clay turned Ali certainly had a tumultuous history with the United States, as he was jailed for not fighting in the army and stripped of his heavyweight crown, and once tossed his original gold medal from Rome in the Ohio River after being refused service at a white-only restaurant.  But in 1996 is was Ali’s turn to be the international father of hope and healing as he lit the torch and kicked off the games. 

U.S. Basketball’s Dream Team brings home gold.  Barcelona, 1992.

Never before – and most likely, never again – will a greater group of athletes assemble on the same team as the 1992 U.S. Olympic hoop team.  The first year professionals were allowed to play, the roster was studded with stars; Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, and others.  The initial concerns about subjugating egos was unfounded as the Dream Team plates together like a selfless well-oiled machine, smashing their way to a gold medal, and the record books with an average margin of victory of almost 44 points. 

FloJo becomes the fastest woman alive.  Seoul, 1988.

U.S. sprinter and track star Florence Griffith-Joyner took home three gold medals from the Olympics in S. Korea, the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay, earning her the moniker, “the fastest woman of all time.”  Her legacy was questioned after allegations of steroid use emerged but FloJo passed every single drug test. 

The ‘Miracle on Ice.’  Lake Placid, 1980.

Perhaps the greatest win for the United States in any sport at any time, a group of hockey misfits, castoffs, and amateurs that made up the U.S. team in 1980 went on to topple the mighty and unbeatable red war machine of the Soviet Union.  The Russian team had taken gold medals in almost every tournament since 1954 but somehow the scrappy Americans played their hearts out and achieved a miracle – a 4-3 win over the Soviet team.  Two day’s later the U.S. team beat Finland to capture the gold and inspire a generation of believers.

Women’s Soccer team wins Gold in overtime!  Athens, 2004

Any time you see the ‘United States’ and ‘gold’ mentioned in the same sentence as ‘soccer,’ you have to do a double take, but the improbability of the win by our women in 2004 led to one of the finest Olympic moments.  It all happened when Abby Wambach kicked in the winning goal against powerhouse Brazil in overtime to win the game- and the gold!

Jesse Owens takes on Hitler. Berlin, 1936.

The world was much different in 1936, as nationalist rumblings by a Nazi hatemonger named Adolf Hitler were building toward World War II.  The Chancellor of Germany at the time, Hitler was intent on proving to the world that the Aryan race was superior in every way – including athletically.  So when the Olympics took place in Munich, Germany in ’36 it was a perfect chance to highlight the dominance of his ‘master race’ theories.  However our own Jesse Owens, African-American sprinter, hometown hero, and model citizen of the highest magnitude, made sure that the Furor was personally embarrassed.  Owens had one of the most individually dazzling Olympics in history and came home with 4 gold medals in the 100m, 200m, 4.100m relay and long jump competitions, including the title of the world’s fastest man. 

Michael Phelps swims his way to the record books.  Beijing, 2008.

The boy-next-door turned Aquaman Phelps put on perhaps the greatest individual show in the Olympics by earning 8 gold medals in China.  He stood atop the podium with gold around his neck more than any other athlete in history after winning the 100m butterfly, 200m butterfly, 200m freestyle, 200m individual medley, 400m individual medley, 4x100 freestyle relay, 4x200m freestyle relay, and 4x 100m medley relay.  Phelps barely topped U.S. swimming great Mark Spitz’s record 7 gold medals at the Munich OIympics in 1972 and now is the all-time medal’s holder with an astounding 18 gold’s and 22 overall medals. 

Tommie Smith and John Carlos fists in the air.  Mexico City, 1968.

Smith and Carlos, U.S. track stars, had just won gold and bronze medals in the 200m race in ’68 when they took their places on the podium.  Dressed uniformly in black with one black glove on, they each thrust one fist in the air while the Star Spangled Banner was played in protest.  At the time, and through history, it’s been widely recognized as a salute for the Black Power movement but in fact Smith later revealed that it was a political statement to bring awareness to human rights, and both Smith, Carlos, and Austrian silver medalist winner, Peter Norman, were wearing matching human rights pins at the time. 

Greg Louganis hits his head on the diving board…but still wins gold.  Seoul, 1988.

Almost all of us have seen the now-famous photo of Louganis smashing the back of his head on the diving board while attempting a dive in that Olympics, but not everyone knows that he came back from that injury.  Bloodied but not discouraged, Louganis needed four emergency sutures and was suffering from a concussion when get got back up on the board and won two gold medals in two later events.

Rulond Gardner wrestles a legend - and wins.  Sydney, 2000.

With apologies to Carl Lewis, Marry Lou Retton, Eric Heiden, and Bruce Jenner, one of the top moments in U.S. Olympic history has almost all but been forgotten.  But the name Rulon Gardner stands tall in importance for our country.  Gardner, a lumpy farm boy with a big smile from Afton, Wyoming, went into the gold medal round of the Greco-Roman wrestling competition against an immovable force – Russian Aleksandr Karelin.  Karelin was an absolute beast, defeating hundreds of opponents up until then in a mind-blowing 13 year undefeated run in international wrestling.  Karelin hadn’t even given up a single POINT in over 6 years of matches!  But somehow, Gardener persevered and beat him for a gold medal, the only loss n Karelin’s career against 887 wins!