Contacts: Derek Brown, Disability Resource Center, The University of Arizona; [email protected]; Telephone: 520-626-5492; Cheri Blauwet, telephone: 520-882-0608; Troy Davis, telephone: 520-200-8160
Two world-class track athletes are heading to Sydney to represent the United States. Cheri Blauwet and Troy Davis, both undergraduates at the University of Arizona in Tucson, will be competing in the Para-Olympics scheduled for later next month.
Both are sprinters who will be competing in wheelchair races. Davis is a bona fide contender in the 100-meter sprint with a personal best of 14.59 seconds, just a blink over the current world record time of 14.33.
Blauwet excels at four races: the 100-, 200-, 400- and 800-meter sprints. UA wheelchair track and road racing coach Derek Brown says she has a chance for a medal in each event.
Brown is preparing them with two-a-day practices this week. They will be leaving Tucson for Australia the first week of October.
Blauwet, a junior from Larchwood, Iowa, is in the UA Honors College studying molecular and cellular biology, and minoring in piano and clarinet. Next summer she will tackle the MCATs, hoping to attend medical school "somewhere" after graduating for the UA. She has been racing since her freshman year in high school, and rates her own chances best in the shorter races.
Davis is a senior from Mesa, Ariz., who is wrapping up his degree in management information systems. Grad school is somewhere in the picture, but since UA MIS grads are in high demand, Davis thinks spending time in industry has some appeal. He started racing when he was 12 and has been aiming for a shot at the Olympics "since I was little."
Sydney's springtime temperatures will be a welcome break. Blauwet and Davis and their teammates are up early in the morning to train at the Drachman Stadium track near campus in order to beat the worst part of the summer heat. But even at 8:00 a.m., temperatures are well into the 80s and practice is not a cupcake.
They are amazingly good athletes. Propelling a wheelchair at around 20 miles per hour takes a combination of strength, endurance and coordination. Brown says upper body strength is important but not at the expense of conditioning, so he is not shy about working them on the track.
The chairs they race are custom-made and expensive. Comparing them to the wheelchairs they use just to get around campus is like the difference between an Indy formula car to, say, the world's best scooter. Davis and Blauwet have spent time in Florida supervising the construction of their vehicles. Technology, says Davis, can make all the difference when trying to shave a few hundredths of a second in a race.
Spills are infrequent, but can be ugly. Davis has sustained his share of shoulder injuries from collisions and falls.
Brown says Davis and Blauwet are both driven by competition, and he likes to challenge them on their workouts. A veteran wheelchair racer, Brown came to the UA nearly three years ago from the University of Illinois. His own success as a junior athlete and for the Illini have brought considerable credibility to the UA program, which is housed at the Disability Resource Center at First Street and Cherry Avenue. The center provides athletes with a weight room where they round out their practices on the track.
The Para-Olympics in Sydney, Australia, begin Oct. 11.
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