Kendall Bailey is 19 years old, 6 foot 6, and a champion swimmer headed for the Paralympics in Beijing this September—–but he was almost rendered ineligible by the United States itself. Bailey has cerebral palsy, mental retardation, autism, and Klinefelter’s syndrome, which prevents his body from producing testosterone. Today’s New York Times profiles his dream to swim in the Paralympics and the efforts of his mother, Connie Shaw, to make sure that this happens:
Kendall Bailey is a rare case of a mentally disabled athlete who also has the physical disabilities to qualify him for the Paralympics. But in April, amid …read more

We all root for amputees—-until they win medals is the blurb on an article by William Saletan in the May 21st Slate. Saletan writes about Oscar Pistorius, the runner from South Africa who—he is a double amputee—runs on specially built prostheses called “cheetahs” ( j-shapes blades made of carbon fiber). Pistorius recently won a decision to be allowed to compete in the Olympic trials; the International Association of Athletics (IAAF—track’s governing body) had argued that he had an unfair advantage because of his high-tech prosthetic legs. But the Court of Sports Arbitration “deemed that there was not enough evidence to …read more