[Nfbf-l] Being the eyes

[Alan Dicey]

Being the eyes
By Caryn Maconi February 11, 2014,
(Photo Staci Mannella with guide Kim Seevers)
Alpine skier Staci Mannella, who will make her Paralympic debut in Sochi, 
Russia, is visually impaired. She competes with guide Kim Seevers.

For athletes with visual impairments, guides are an irreplaceable component 
of daily training and racing.
Finding the right one can be challenging, but in the end, a guide that is 
the perfect fit can mean the difference between the podium and fourth place.

>From skiing to cycling to running, every athlete/guide relationship is 
different, and each takes a level of trust and connectedness that's 
difficult to find anywhere else in sport.

Take cyclist Clark Rachfal and pilot Dave Swanson, the tandem duo who are so 
in sync, they can pedal a two-person bike at up to 60 miles per hour through 
harrowing turns and crowded pelotons without blinking an eye.

Or take guide Rolland Slade, who can, in one word, communicate to his 
partner David Brown, a world medalist sprinter, exactly where the two are on 
the track, all while at full speed in a 200-meter race.

Or 17-year-old alpine skier Staci Mannella, who's been following the orange 
vest of her 56-year-old guide Kim Seevers since childhood.

There's swimmer/triathlete Brad Snyder and his brother Russell, who can 
match Brad's stride foot-for-foot in a 100-meter dash or guide him through 
throngs of runners in a marathon.

And there's world champion paratriathlete and runner Ivonne 
Mosquera-Schmidt, whose "Ivonne Guiding 101" is so effective, she'll trust a 
brand new guide from a local running club to take her through a race - 
provided the guide can run the pace Mosquera-Schmidt is aiming for.

The relationships and strategies vary, but the goal for each of these 
athletes is the same - to find the partner who will enable them to reach 
their highest potential in Paralympic sport.

The trust
For most athletes, racing blind can be scary and stressful - especially when 
first learning. After all, "logical" isn't the first word that comes to mind 
when considering racing a 5k through downtown streets, in a pack of other 
runners, without any vision.
The first step, then, is to find a guide who can effectively keep the 
athlete away from hazards in both training and racing environments.
"Because safety is such a huge aspect of what we're doing, trust is the 
biggest issue, so there's got to be a reason for the athlete to trust the 
guide", said Seevers, who will compete with Mannella at the Sochi 2014 
Paralympic Winter Games next month.
"You have to think about 'Okay, when I go over this drop, what is that going 
to do to Staci if I don't tell her it's coming?'"
And, of course, the athlete must be willing to hand over that trust.

Navy veteran Brad Snyder, who lost his vision in an improvised explosive 
device blast in September 2011, earned a gold medal at the London 2012 
Paralympic Games in swimming and is now training for triathlons. Because 
Snyder is just a couple years removed from his accident, he remembers the 
early struggles of adjusting to blindness.
"Everything's scary at first, especially running in a race where people are 
bumping into you and there are changes in terrain," Snyder said. "The only 
person I've run super aggressively with is my brother Russ, and he's a rock 
star at guiding.
One, he says all the right things. Two, he's just a good runner. If I'm 
running at my fullest capacity, it's only his 80 percent, so it works out 
well for us."
Nowadays, Snyder says he will train with anyone who is interested in 
learning to guide, though he's more selective in choosing a guide for 
racing.
"Barring a curb or a significant mistake, I'll be able to catch most things 
and then kind of work through it with the guide," Snyder said. "You have my 
full trust until you mess it up. Then I'll start to be a little more 
conservative, and I'll coach the guide from there."
That trust has to be mutual, too. Swanson, a sighted pilot for para-cyclist 
Clark Rachfal, must trust Clark to follow his movements and respond to his 
decisions on the bike. Otherwise, at the speeds the two travel, it would be 
easy to lose control.
"If I didn't trust Clark to follow me as well as he does, there's no way I 
would be able to push it as hard as I can through the corners," Swanson 
said. "And when everything goes pear-shaped, he knows that his best bet is 
to follow me so that I'm not trying to fight him while I'm fighting to keep 
the bike up. It's one thing to say that, but with as well as he does that, I 
have the utmost respect for the trust he puts in me each and every day on 
the bike."

Rachfal's outlook on the trust issue is more straightforward. "Until Dave 
leans how to crash the bike and not hurt himself, I think I'm okay," Rachfal 
said. "It's in his best interest to put us in a position to win and be safe, 
and it's in my best interest to follow and not second guess at 50 miles per 
hour, because I don't want to upset the balance and the control."

The communication
The most important quality in a successful guide, regardless of the sport, 
is communication. Each athlete/guide pair has a different method of 
communicating, and some prefer to say more than others.
"On snow, if (Kim) says something, I usually know exactly what she's talking 
about," Mannella said of her longtime guide. "She knows what to tell me and 
what not to tell me. She knows what's best for me to know and some things I 
maybe shouldn't know, so that kind of works well. When you've skied with 
someone for as long as we've skied together, we know each other pretty 
well."
Sometimes, words aren't even necessary. "We've been together for six years, 
and we have such a synergy that she knows what all my noises mean," Seevers 
said of racing with Mannella. "If something happens and I can't get the 
words out fast enough, 90 percent of the time she knows what my noises are 
telling her and she doesn't usually need to say anything."

When an athlete and guide have a strong connection, even body language can 
communicate volumes.
"So much of our communication has become non-verbal," Swanson said. "He 
knows what it means when I make certain body motions or move the bike a 
certain way, with few or no words spoken. I also know what his movements 
mean, and how the 'feel' of the bike changes in different circumstances."

Brown, a visually-impaired track runner who's found the ultimate guide 
Slade, also a competitive able-bodied sprinter, knows how something as 
simple as mismatched pacing can make communication nearly impossible. "I 
just want to let every blind person know that if you're going to use a 
guide, he must be faster than you," Brown said, "Because he has to be able 
to communicate and not be tired. I've had many guide runners where we were 
in a race, and they're all out of breath. You also have to make sure your 
guide runner is in shape, because you can't be dragging him."

The friendships
Some athlete/guide pairs grow naturally out of friendships or family ties, 
as with Snyder and his brother Russ. Other times, friendships grow out of 
the experience of training together for so many hours and placing so much 
trust in each other's hands.
"There are times when I'm stressed, angry, in pain, and I just want to go 
home because it's cold and raining, but (Clark) is, too. We're in this 
together," Swanson said.
"If you have that respect, I think you'll end up being friends, because 
you're going through all the same trauma. Every time I've been in a race, 
he's been there also."

For Mosquera-Schmidt, who trains with a variety of guides throughout the 
season, racing is a way to make new friends who share a common love for the 
sport.
"I've found that running and triathlon have been such great ways to connect 
the able-bodied and disabled communities together," said Mosquera-Schmidt, 
who competed at the 2013 world championships for both paratriathlon and 
track and field. "I've met people from all backgrounds - filmmakers, 
artists, doctors, lawyers, freelancers - and we're all doing something we 
love and sharing in the sport."

And when a duo finally does reach that podium spot, it's the shared 
experience that makes it that much more meaningful, as both athlete and 
guide receive medals.
"You're Robin to the Batman. You're the eyes, but you're training day in day 
out knowing this person has a dream," Slade said of Brown, the runner he 
guides.
"To see (David) succeed, to see what he's overcome and the effort he puts 
forth day in and day out. To help somebody achieve a dream like that, that's 
what keeps me doing it."
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