Unlimited, Unbounded, Unbelievable

Gail Morning is a competitive swimmer, powerlifter, tennis player, and bowler. She also has an intellectual disability. After participating in the Special Olympics for years, the young woman from Warrington discovered another group, called Athletes Without Limits, which offers sporting opportunities to individuals with intellectual disabilities. The organization provides serious and rigorous competition to the most talented athletes, allows individuals with intellectual disabilities to compete at the top of their sport, and invites them to travel around the world to meet and compete against similarly matched athletes. Yet perhaps the most complete way of describing what this organization does might be to state how it makes its athletes feel: “I feel happy,” said Morning, describing what it’s like to compete in the sports she loves. It’s that simple.

Athletes Without Limits was formed a little more than a year ago by a mom looking for competitive opportunities for her son. Tracy Lea had watched her son, Syd, win countless gold medals at the Special Olympics in cycling events. But because the Special Olympics is designed to reach the broadest spectrum of intellectually disabled athletes, some elite participants—like Syd—simply craved more competition. While searching for sporting challenges for her son, Lea discovered the International Federation for Sport for People with an Intellectual Disability (INAS-FID), an England-based organization established in 1986, which invites athletes to compete at a higher level. So Syd was off to Poland to compete, then Portugal, and then Hungary. Soon, however, the organization announced that unless the United States formed its own INAS-FID affiliate, Americans would not be permitted to participate in their events. After searching for help to form an affiliate, Lea realized there was only one solution: she had to form her own—and so, Athletes Without Limits was born.

The organization was initially formed with Syd as its only member. But when Lea, who lives in Maryland, was competing in a cycling event in Lancaster, Pa., last year, she heard about some other candidates. “I was chatting with another girl who was a swimmer, and I asked if she knew any special education kids who swim,” she explained. “And she said, ‘Yea, I know some fast ones.’” That’s how Gail Morning and Maria D’Andrea, from Bensalem, joined Athletes Without Limits. “Finding the young women in Bucks County was the cornerstone of putting a face on what we’re trying to do,” said Lea. “We are reaching into the population of Special athletes and giving them opportunities they didn’t have.”

For Maria D’Andrea, Athletes Without Limits was a great discovery. Soon after joining the organization, she was off to the Czech Republic to swim in the INAS-FID Global Games. “I like it because when I went to the Czech Republic, I saw kids that are just like me, and I could be myself,” said D’Andrea, nineteen. “I didn’t have to not be myself.” Her mother, Maryanne D’Andrea, recognizes that sports have helped her daughter enormously. “She was on the high school swim team, and that helped her confidence and self-esteem,” she said. “Swimming helps her. When she was swimming in high school, I saw a change in her. It was the one thing she was really good at.”

Gail Morning, twenty-six, has been competing in the Special Olympics since she was five years old, and she has the wall full of awards and medals to prove it; but Athletes Without Limits allows her to push herself to compete at a higher level. “She had gone as far as she could go with the Special Olympics,” explained Bill Donohoe, Morning’s stepfather. “She was winning gold every time she stepped out there. This offers a different kind of venue and more competition. She likes that.” Morning seems to love being involved. “It keeps me in shape and fit,” she said. “I love to compete.”

Athletes Without Limits currently has four member athletes, with six or seven more getting accreditation to compete, according to Lea. To qualify, athletes must have an IQ of 75 or below, significant limitations in Adaptive Behavior, and an intellectual disability that began before age eighteen. For now, the organization focuses on five sports: swimming, track and field, cycling, rowing, and table tennis. With increased funding (which Lea said comes from “angel friends”), the hope is to attract more athletes and expand to more sports.

Yet Lea’s core team of athletes has already proven the success of Athletes Without Limits. Morning and D’Andrea both had impressive debuts at the Global Games in the Czech Republic last year. Syd Lea is also a member of mainstream (non-disabled) U.S. Cycling, as well as being the second-ranked cyclist with an intellectual disability in the world. He recently rode 100 miles from Boston to Cape Cod in a mainstream cycling event and placed fortieth in a field of 500 men. “His brain doesn’t work so well, and he doesn’t talk as well as he should, but he’s really fast, and he beats people,” said his mother. “He was once riding with these athletes from West Point. They might be leaders of the free world someday, but they were like, ‘Hey, that Special Ed kid just dusted me.’ It’s an equalizer.”

Lea said she hopes that her accomplished athletes also encourage others to strive for excellence. “It’s nice to see other families who say, ‘Maybe my kid could do this,’” she said. Ideally, Lea wants to see athletes with intellectual disabilities competing in the Special Olympics, in INAS-FID events, and in mainstream competitions. “They may take longer to learn,” she said. “They may need additional support or modified instruction when learning the sport. But we want them to get on the high school swim team or on the soccer league. We want to break down the stereotypes. We want to expand the access…When athletes play together, walls come down and respect happens. It opens up people’s hearts and minds.”

Lea, who has an older son who competed in the Beijing Olympics wants her athletes to dream without limits. “We are here so that a parent of a child with an intellectual disability can get that call from inside [the] Olympic stadium one day,” she said. “When I got that call from my older son from Beijing during the Opening Ceremonies, I was hearing the roar of the stadium live. He said, ‘Mom, I’m here.’ Someday, Syd can call [me] or Maria can call her mom.”

For Maria D’Andrea, those dreams have, in many ways, already come true. “My dream was always to go to the Olympics,” she shared. “To me, Athletes Without Limits is like the Olympics, because in the Olympics, every country is there, and in the Global Games, every country is there. When I was there, it felt like I accomplished my dream of going to the Olympics.”

For more information about Athletes Without Limits, contact www.athleteswithoutlimits.org. To find out about athlete eligibility, call (202) 544-0510 or email info@athleteswithoutlimits.org.

Story by Lauren Eckstein