LOS ANGELES: After more than a week of weightlifting, horseback riding, swimming, soccer matches and dozens of other competitions, 6,500 athletes from 165 countries braced themselves Sunday for perhaps the most emotional Special Olympics World Games event on their schedule — saying goodbye to a city that has embraced them.
“My first visit to LA, but not my last. Definitely looking forward to coming back,” Icelandic soccer player Thor Haklidason said.
“It’s truly been an unbelievable experience and a great time,” he continued, adding people from all over Southern California have embraced him and his teammates everywhere they’ve been.
On Sunday, they’ll have a chance to say goodbye at a star-studded closing ceremony at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, site of the 1932 and 1984 Olympics and the same venue where they were welcomed to Los Angeles on July 25.
Jam band O.A.R., which performed at that opening ceremony, will be back to honor them again, along with Canadian singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen and others during a 2 1/2-hour event broadcast live on ESPN2.
Although not everyone won gold, silver or bronze medals, all the athletes are going home winners. Every competitor received a performance ribbon and a chance to take to the victory stand following their competition. Many also won the hearts of the estimated 500,000 people who turned out to watch at venues all over Los Angeles.
Jamaica’s Kirk D. Wint waved to the crowd as he stepped out of his wheelchair and into the starting block for his 50-meter race last week. Then he propelled himself down the track with the use of his hands because he’s unable to stand. He finished fourth.
In the 100-meter competition, Olivia Quigley of Brookfield, Wisconsin, ran with a red-white-and-blue scarf over her bald head and finished first in her division. Quigley, who has been undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, is scheduled for surgery soon.
Away from the competitions, thousands of athletes lined up at a medical center at the University of Southern California for the games’ Healthy Athletes program. Before it ended Saturday, more than 500 people, including some who could not hear at all, received needed hearing aids. More than 600 received new prescription glasses and more than 4,000 got new shoes.
The Special Olympics, which began in 1968, was the brainchild of President John Kennedy’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver. That first year’s games in Chicago drew about 1,000 athletes from 26 states and Canada.
Organizers say this year’s Special Olympics will be the largest sports and humanitarian event in the world in 2015. -AP