Cheers escape into the chlorine-tinged air. Young legs move up and down nervously and hands cling to the railings around the swimming pool.
Bang! Jenna Higgins (24) dives gracefully into the pool and moves quickly through the water, competing in the 200m backstroke. She clocks in at 3:39,68. It is the new world record.
The occasion is the national swimming championships of the South African Sporting Association for the Intellectually Impaired (SASAII) in Potchefstroom, North West. Higgins’s time is the new Down’s syndrome swimming record.
Higgins already holds 17 world records, but seems to excel in long-distance events. She won the 800m freestyle in record-breaking time in Ireland in 2006 at the third international Down’s syndrome swimming championships, almost a length ahead of the swimmer in second position.
The sad thing is that she and other athletes with disabilities will not have an opportunity to represent their country on the Olympic stage.
The Paralympics have been suspended since Sydney 2000 when a group of adult non-disabled athletes sneaked into the Spanish learning disability basketball team and won a gold medal in the Intellectually Impaired category.
Born with Down’s syndrome and a severe heart defect, doctors predicted that Higgins would not reach the age of two without corrective heart surgery.
Down’s syndrome is a genetic disorder, linked to extra material on the chromosome pair 21. One in 650 people in South Africa is born with it.
Higgins first took part in the local Special Olympics when she was eight years old in Durban, says her mother, Barbara Higgins: ”Living by the sea in Durban, Jenna was always in the water. By the age of five I realised her talent and took her for lessons.”
Since then Higgins’s rise in the world of Down’s syndrome swimming has been dizzying.
In 2002 she took part in the first international Down’s syndrome championships in England where she won four gold medals and established four world records.
In 2004 she won 10 gold medals and broke seven world records in the same championships, this time in Durban.
In 2006 she was announced top female swimmer at the third international Down’s syndrome championships in Ireland, this time breaking eight world records and winning Disabled Sportswoman of the Year at the South African Sports Awards in Johannesburg.
Taking a break from the pool at the Potchefstroom championships, Higgins speaks with difficulty, but absolute clarity: ”I like the feeling of the water when I swim. Swimming is my best thing in the whole world. I like winning gold medals.”
As she rushes off to join the rest of the competitors in the upcoming 100m breaststroke, which she later wins, her mother says: ”Competing internationally really helped to build Jen’s self-esteem and confidence. She has learned wonderful life skills and she even made a speech in front of the cameras at the international Down’s syndrome championships in Taiwan.”
The South African Down’s syndrome swimming team was the top-scoring country during this event in Ireland and won the Disabled Sports Team of the Year Award at the South African Sports Awards. The next championships will take place in Portugal in November.
The Paralympics men’s athletics team ended third overall last year at the World Athletics Championships in Brazil.
Craig Groenewald (29) was announced best male swimmer at the World Swimming Championships for the Intellectually Impaired in Belgium last August.
Despite these successes, athletes with disabilities are used to not being treated like national heroes, no matter how well they fare.
Unlike the physically disabled, the sporting teams for the intellectually impaired have no big sponsors apart from the Lotto.
”Absa and BP have withdrawn their sponsorship. MTN refused even to see us in connection with sponsorship and Vodacom also said it couldn’t get involved,” says Lizzie Vogel, SASAII president.
”The intellectually impaired national teams in countries such as England are treated like all the other national teams. They wear the same clothes, get the same sponsors and receive the same media attention,” she says.
Theuns Luus, national convener for SASAII, says: ”Intellectually disabled people are often marginalised, but competing in sport internationally gives them the opportunity to rise above it and prove themselves”.
And they have — SASAII’s national football team ranked third in the world at the last World Cup for the Intellectually Impaired in Germany 2006.
”When we came back from the Football World Cup in Germany there was no media to greet us at the airport. We are third in the world; compare that to Bafana Bafana who rank 40th [it’s actually 71st] in the world. It was really demoralising for us,” said Luus.
Although disappointed by the state of affairs, the stars of the Paralympic scene still dream big. Groenewald says: ”I would like to go to Beijing. I feel like I can get a few good medals for my country. My big dream is to get a world record in the 50m pool for freestyle at the Paralympics.”