By LIZ GOOCH
Published: December 7, 2009
(Posted by CAAI News Media)
SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA — At first, San Mao thought he had been shot in the leg.
It was a reasonable assumption on that day, nearly 20 years ago, given that Khmer Rouge soldiers were forcing him to carry ammunition across the Cambodian countryside. But when Mr. San Mao, then 17, found he was unable to get up from the forest floor, he realized that the lower part of his right leg was gone — blown off by one of the millions of land mines planted across the country during its decades of conflict. Many mines still lurk dangerously in rural areas.
After he lost his leg, Mr. San Mao was unable to resume his work clearing fields for farming. People looked down on him, he said, and no one would give him a job.
But on Sunday morning, any sense of despair seemed well behind him. Against the majestic backdrop of the Angkor Wat temple ruins, Mr. San Mao, 35, grinned broadly as he climbed a podium to be crowned the champion of the 10-kilometer, or 6.2-mile, race for athletes with artificial legs, held as part of the Angkor Wat International Half Marathon.
Mr. San Mao, who is now married with a 7-year-old daughter and works as a motorcycle taxi driver in Phnom Penh, was one of almost 3,500 disabled and able-bodied athletes from around the world who competed in various divisions.
The races for disabled people, which have been part of the Angkor Wat half marathon since its inception 13 years ago, are part of a campaign to help them gain acceptance in Cambodia, which has one of the world’s highest concentrations of people with disabilities, many of them land mine survivors.
“Many of our athletes have gone from being the most marginalized in society to national heroes,” said Christopher Minko, the founder and secretary general of the Cambodian National Volleyball League (Disabled), a nongovernmental organization.
While demining efforts have been under way across Cambodia for more than 15 years, the violent aftereffects of three decades of war are still being felt.
Last year, 47 people were killed and 222 injured by land mines, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Since 1979, land mines have killed 19,476 Cambodians and injured 43,926. Nongovernmental organizations say the victims are usually farmers.
One of the national heroes Mr. Minko referred to is Van Vun, 23, a Cambodian wheelchair-racing champion in multiple categories who hopes to qualify for the marathon at the London 2012 Paralympics.
Mr. Van Vun has been unable to walk since contracting polio when he was 18 months old. Growing up, he would shuffle around on his hands before he got his first wheelchair, at the age of 15.
Before he started competing, he said, people used to ignore him. Now, people stop him in the streets and neighbors in his home village near Phnom Penh ask to see his trophies.
“The situation is much better than before,” he said. “It makes me feel happy. I’m proud because I’m No. 1.”
With his legs tucked tightly underneath him, Mr. Van Vun rode his broad shoulders and muscled forearms to victory in the 21-kilometer wheelchair division Sunday at Angkor Wat, in a chair donated by Canada’s national volleyball team for the disabled.
The Cambodian volleyball league organizes both volleyball and wheelchair racing programs for more than 250 people each year, most of whom are land mine victims.
Honored by the United Nations Development Program in 2006, the group runs a national volleyball competition with 10 clubs and trains 50 wheelchair athletes like Mr. Van Vun.
The league has worked with about 2,000 people with disabilities since it was established in 1999, but Mr. Minko, an Australian, said it had nowhere near enough funds to meet Cambodian demand for sports for the disabled. “We have only touched the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Minko said.
The success of the national volleyball team — which finished seventh at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics, beating the host nation — has helped raise the profile of disabled athletes in Cambodia.
The team, which will compete in the World Organization Volleyball for Disabled World Cup 2009 in Phnom Penh later this month, is ranked third in the world and is aiming for the top spot.
“Cambodians now recognize the ability of Cambodians with a disability, and that these people are bringing great honor and dignity to the nation through their sporting endeavors on the international arena,” Mr. Minko said.
Yann Drouet, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s physical rehabilitation project in Cambodia, said sport could provide a psychological boost to amputees as well as play an important role in their physical rehabilitation. “It demonstrates to the amputee that they can trust their device and they can do things that they didn’t think they could do after an amputation,” he said.
Yamaguchi Taku, project manager at Hearts of Gold, the Japanese nongovernmental organization that runs the Angkor Wat race, said people often lost “their hope to live” after they were injured by land mines, and some families hid disabled relatives away from the public eye.
“After the explosion, they have no idea how to live, how to survive, how to continue their lives,” he said.
Sports can reduce their feelings of isolation, he said. “It gets them back into normal life.”
Since it was first held in 1996, the Angkor Wat International Half Marathon has raised more than $218,800 to help support Cambodians with disabilities, with a focus on providing amputees with prostheses.
The unique course, which winds through the world-heritage listed Angkor Wat complex, is growing in popularity with locals and foreigners alike, attracting about 1,780 runners from countries as far away as Argentina, Finland and Russia and about 1,700 Cambodians this year.
For Mr. San Mao, who has competed in Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Korea and trains twice a week with the Cambodian Disabled Athletics Federation, the win Sunday was bittersweet.
He says he knows he could have run faster — if only he had had the proper prosthesis.
Mr. San Mao, who won his division every year from 2002 to 2007, last year broke the prosthesis he used specially for running.
Since then, he has been forced to compete with the artificial limb that he wears every day because he cannot afford to have his running prosthesis fixed, or find a donor to buy a new one.
Nevertheless, he was thrilled to return to the winner’s podium. “I feel very happy I won the prize,” he said.
