“I wanna do,” were Marla Runyan’s first words as a toddler (Abbey 91). Little did she know, she would be able to accomplish what she “wanna do.” Marla Runyan set the track on fire with her disability. Runyan lives with Stargardt’s disease; however, she gets to enjoy many activities and accomplish many awards that “normal” people do.
Marla Runyan had Stargardt’s disease which causes irreversible blindness (Abbey 91). Stargardt's disease is known as “a hereditary degenerative disorder that affects central vision” (“Marla Runyan”). It is a form of macular degeneration which is a “progressive deterioration of a critical region of the retina called the macula.” Basically, the macula stops working, eliminating clear, central vision (“Macular Degeneration”). The disease is originally caused naturally by heredity (Abbey 91). There are many other causes of blindness such as diabetes, retinal detachment, onchocerciasis, and trachoma (Bender 13). Blindness can even be caused by albinism since albino people are often sensitive to light (31). Because of all of these causes, no…show more content… When she was twenty-three, in the 1992 Paralympics, she received one silver and four gold medals. Four years later, she qualified for the Olympic Trials, but did not make the actual team (“Marla Runyan”). Finally, Runyan qualified for the 2000 Olympics and became the first blind Olympian (Abbey 99). She came in eighth place for the fifteen-hundred meter (a mile is sixteen-hundred meters), with a time of four minutes, eight seconds (“Marla Runyan”). After the Olympics, she kept running, and in 2001, she set the American indoor track record for five-thousand meters (more than three miles). In 2001, Runyan received the Helen Keller Achievement Award from the American Foundation of the Blind (Abbey 105). She set the world record for the half mile with a time of two minutes and four seconds (“Marla Runyan”). She also set the world record for the
