My Sportsman Choice: Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah

By Austin Murphy

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What are we looking for here? Are we looking for courage? For quiet heroism? We need look no further, in that case, than Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, a 27-year-old from Ghana whose expression of a simple desire three years ago has changed a nation.

He was in Del Mar, Calif., recently for a private screening of Emmanuel's Gift, a documentary about his life. Emmanuel was born without the tibia in his right leg, which curled up beneath him, withered and useless. Seeing this, his father abandoned the family. In Ghana, Emmanuel told me before the screening, "when you are a deformed child, people think your mother sinned." Some of his mother's friends urged her to kill him, or at least abandon him.

Instead, Comfort Yeboah nurtured and encouraged her firstborn. "She gave me the idea that I could go to school and become a great man," Emmanuel says. In a country whose disabled are expected to beg, Comfort's decision to send her son to primary school was, as narrator Oprah Winfrey notes, "a radical choice."

Comfort was raising a mild radical, a smiling contrarian who was offended by and constantly rebelling against his society's low expectations of him. She died when he was 13. Emmanuel had dropped out of school and moved to Accra, the capital of Ghana, where he shined shoes for $2 a day and hatched a grand plan: He would ride across Ghana, proving to his countrymen that the physically challenged are capable of surprising things; that all people have value.

He would need a better bike. He sent a grant request to the San Diego-based Challenged Athlete Foundation, whose members were impressed that he asked not for money, but for a bicycle. They sent both. Emmanuel's subsequent, 610-kilometer ride (379 miles) across Ghana got huge play in the nation's media, which he used to gently scold the government, whose policy on the country's two million disabled was to ignore their existence.

The CAF invited him to San Diego to ride the 56-mile bike leg in its annual Triathlon Challenge. It took him seven hours to get around the course, after which he observed, in his lilting voice, "I did not know San Diego was so hilly."

While in the United States, Emmanuel was evaluated by doctors from Loma Linda Hospital, who judged him a candidate for a prosthetic. He returned five months later for the operation. The documentary follows him from the morning of his surgery to his first step with the prosthesis to his gutsy completion of a triathlon, six weeks later, to his joyous reunion in Ghana with members of his extended family, who'd never seen wear trousers, or walk without crutches.

He returned for the '03 Triathlon Challenge. With two legs, Emmanuel got around the course in four hours. He was honored that day as the CAF's most inspirational athlete; Robin Williams handed him the award. He flew to Oregon to receive the Casey Martin Award. Nike presented him with a $25,000 check; the CAF matched it. On his way back to Ghana, he stopped in New York City for a meeting with U.N. Secretary General and fellow Ghanaian Kofi Annan.

Not bad for a kid who just wanted a decent bike.

Emmanuel and the UN secretary-general discussed the rights of their country's disabled, where, until recently, the handicapped were not allowed inside the King's Palace. Last March, Emmanuel stood in the Palace alongside the King as five high-end wheelchairs and 15 scholarships -- underwritten by Emmanuel's grant money -- were distributed. He has started a cycling team, a wheelchair basketball team and a running team for physically challenged athletes. A sports academy for disabled athletes is in the works. He has galvanized the physically challenged in his country: one of the many high moments of this immensely powerful documentary shows a rollicking parade of 600 disabled protesters, inspired and emboldened by Emmanuel. Before the screening, he told me he is planning to run for Ghana's Parliament.

Run, Emmanuel, run.

Sports Illustrated will announce the 2004 Sportsman of the Year winner on FOX on November 28. Check back every weekday until then to read more Sportsman picks from SI writers.