Double amputee in Sydney Olympics qualifier

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Even without legs, Gavin Foulsham is speeding towards his dream of becoming the first man to win gold at both the Olympics and the Paralympics.

The double amputee will strap himself into a streamlined racing chair in Switzerland next week to try to qualify for the Olympic wheelchair 1500m.

It is the first time a disabled sport has been given full medal status at an Olympics. Men and women in wheelchairs will share the same Sydney track as the fastest sprinters on earth.

Foulsham, a 29-year-old Aucklander, born without fibulas in both legs, has already made the New Zealand team for the Paralympics, held a fortnight after the able-bodied Games end.

"But it would be so wicked to win an Olympic medal," he said. "To be accepted as an Olympic athlete is the ultimate."

It would be the supreme reward for a boy who grew up refusing to believe he was disabled.

When Foulsham was a toddler, his parents made the difficult decision to have his lower legs amputated. Doctors told them it would be too hard to stay on their farm in tiny Tapawera, and they would have to move into the nearby city of Nelson.

"Mum and Dad said 'no, bugger him, he can learn to grow up on a farm'," he said.

"I was so lucky. I had to get the wood in, help with the lambing, pick raspberries. I was like a normal kid."

He learned to walk with artificial limbs and was playing rugby at seven.

"I used to tell people that when I kicked the ball, it went one way and my leg went the other," he smiles.

"I played till I was 14 - the kids just accepted me."

That was until high school, when he was told he could no longer take part in mainstream sports.

"I didn't want to have anything to do with disabled sport - I didn't think I was disabled."

But his mum encouraged him to try wheelchair racing, convincing him the chair was just a machine, like a kayak or a bike. And it would certainly provide all the same thrills and spills.

While in training for these Games, Foulsham suffered a nasty accident in January when he was racing around the Auckland waterfront.

He was zipping along at 30 km/h when his $7000 chair snapped in half. The handlebars smashed him in the face, knocking out two front teeth and gouging chunks out of his nose. He spent two days in hospital and needed skin grafts.

Unfazed, the pharmaceuticals sales rep bought a new chair, determined to better his 15th place at the 1992 Paralympics, and make the 10-man field for the Olympic race.

Another New Zealander, paraplegic Ben Lucas of Blenheim, will also contest the Olympic qualifier in Switzerland. He won bronze in the 1994 Commonwealth Games wheelchair marathon.

Despite the breakthrough for disabled sports into the greatest sporting show on earth, for Foulsham the battle is not quite won.

"I feel our race should have been open to anyone. So if [an able-bodied person] wanted to compete, you could," he said.

"Like Mum said, the wheelchair is just a machine."

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