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Olympic heroes Many Olympians provide more lasting contributions
SYDNEY -- What sort of athlete makes a lasting impression on an Olympic icon? For Norway's Johann Olav Koss, a four-time Olympic champion in speedskating, it was a boy he met in an orphanage in the Eritrean capital of Asmara five years ago. Ahmed seemed to be the envy of other boys who welcomed Koss on one of his humanitarian missions to the war-torn African country on behalf of Olympic Aid, the organization born at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics. Koss was there, using money he helped raise, to present soccer balls to the boys. The other hundred or so orphaned boys followed Ahmed's lead everywhere he went. The neighborhood Pelé, no doubt, Koss figured, before learning the real reason for the esteem Ahmed's pals held for him. "This was the boy who had sleeves on his shirts," Koss explained. "The boys used their shirts to make a soccer ball, but they needed someone with sleeves to tie it up and make a good ball." Ahmed had sleeves. Ahmed had friends.
"Thanks to the tireless fundraising and campaigning of Koss and other athletes, Olympic Aid has raised over $31 million in six years and has used the money to purchase sporting equipment for children like Ahmed, to build and renovate schools and hospitals, and to fund immunization for 12 million infants. Earlier this year U.S. long jumper Mike Powell, U.S. gymnast Trent Dimas and Canadian rower Silken Laumann joined Koss in Eritrea. Many of the boys Koss met on his first trip had graduated to the Eritrea's elite junior soccer ranks; others had died in the renewed civil war with neighboring Ethiopia. "The athletes support for these people has been wonderful," Koss said from the Sydney press center on Thursday. "You never hear the word no from the Olympic athletes when it comes to helping children." Australian athletes have pitched in en masse to help Olympic Aid during these Games. Rowing gold medalist Kate Slatter and swimmer Daniel Kowalski brought sports equipment to refugee camps in Cambodia; swimmer Samantha Riley and triathlete Greg Welch held a coaching clinic in East Timor, which has sent four athletes to the Sydney Games. The money raised at these games will be split evenly between Olympic Aid's international programs and causes within Australia, including the Children's Cancer Institute, the Leukemia Society, and charities run by tennis heroes Patrick Rafter and Evonne Goolagong-Cawley. Other Olympians will follow in Koss' skate tracks by donating personal memorabilia from the Games to an online auction to raise money for Olympic Aid. Koss did the same in 1994, when he put up the skates he used to set three world records in three races at the Lillehammer Games and raised $130,000 for the charity. Olympic fans and memorabilia buffs will be able to bid on items such as warm-ups, start numbers and running shoes from the Sydney Games by clicking on www.olympicaid.com. The bidding, which will be handled through the online auction house eBay, will begin once athletes start completing their events and run through Oct. 8, one week after the Games end. There will also be items from 1996, including the singlet Dan O'Brien wore when he won the decathlon, a practice outfit of U.S. gymnast Dominique Moceanu and the swim cap of Australia's Susie O'Neill. Even IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch pulled a stickpin off his lapel on Thursday and added it to the collection. Cliff Meidl: U.S.'s miracle manIt is shocking that Cliff Meidl is able to carry the U.S. flag in Friday's Opening Ceremonies. The 34-year-old sprint kayaker is on his second Olympic team. But Meidl is best known as the man who teammates say can light up a room with his electric personality and radiant smile. "They can make all the jokes they want," says Meidl, "as long as I'm alive." Flash back to 1986. Meidl was working as a plumber's apprentice when he inadvertently drove a jackhammer through three unmarked power cables and sent 30,000 volts of electricity through his body. The jolt was roughly 15 times what prisoners are given in the electric chair. But since the jolt was brief, Meidl survived, losing several toes and cracking open his skull. The electricity somehow exited through a hole the charge created through his back. Meidl went into cardiac arrest three times and wasn't revived for another 10 hours. "When I woke up, I felt like there was a tank on my chest because of the shocks they had given my heart," Meidl recalls. Doctors told his family they might have to amputate Cliff's knees, which had slid back under the working jackhammer after the shock. It took him 10 weeks to get out of the hospital and months of rehab before he could walk any reasonable distance without crutches. In more than a dozen subsequent operations, doctors transplanted muscles from Meidl's calves into his knees. Inspired by Greg Barton, the U.S. double gold medalist in 1988 who was born with webbed feet, Meidl took up kayaking two years after the accident. "I didn't need to use my legs much," Meidl explained on Thursday. "As someone who had always been active, I just wanted a way to get back into sports, to feel like an athlete again. I didn't think something like this could happen to me." SI writer-reporter Brian Cazeneuve, the magazine's Olympics expert, is
already in Australia gearing up for the Games. Check back daily to follow his
behind-the-scenes reports.
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