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Marathoner Choo Soon-young poses with the Korean national flag after finishing the race at the Berlin Marathon 2008 on Sunday. /Courtesy of the Purme Foundation
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Choo Soon-young crossed the finish line at the Brandenburg Gate for the Berlin Marathon 2008 at 1:40 p.m. on Sunday, a blue string tied to her wrist the only reminder of the helper who had shepherded the visually impaired runner through the race.
At the 30 km point, Choo¡¯s helper collapsed with cramp in her feet. Up until that point, she had guided her so she would not bump into other runners, connected by a string tied around their wrists. But Choo ran the last 12 km alone.
Choo finished the race in four hours and 10 minutes, about 20 minutes longer than her own record of three hours and 53 minutes set in March. If the helper had stayed with her until the last moment, she feels she could have run faster.
¡ß Visual impairment
Haile Gebrselassie from Ethiopia won the prestigious marathon at 2 hours, 3 minutes and 59 seconds, breaking the world record. Seven Korean handicapped runners who are visually or physically impaired or have developmental disabilities ran under the sponsorship of the Purme Foundation, which is planning to build a rehabilitation hospital for the handicapped, and S-Oil.
Choo is the only visually impaired female runner in Korea who has completed a full marathon. It is difficult for even normal people to run the whole distance of the marathon without making special preparations and training. Therefore visually impaired people who always need helpers cannot even conceive the idea of running a marathon.
Even for Choo, who can identify objects only within 2 m distance, it was an impossible dream. But she worked hard to fulfill her dream little by little, by practicing running with helpers at Mt. Nam in Seoul twice a week.
¡ß Next stop Sahara
Choo had difficulty seeing objects since she was born with optic atrophy. She had surgery when she was 10, but to no avail. She was a member of the national goal ball team during the Olympics in 1988 and 1996. Now, she says her visual impairment no longer poses an obstacle to her because she is not conscious of a handicap.
¡°If I had had no visual impairment, I would have become a soldier or a detective,¡± she says. She dreams of running the whole distance of the seven-day Sahara Desert marathon some day. "My son tried to dissuade me from running in the Sahara because it would be too difficult for me to run in such an environment. So I said to him, 'Your mom is a phoenix. I'll do it because I never give up.¡¯¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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