I did Florida Special Olympics coaching for Track & Field and Volleyball. I did volunteering in New York for Swimming. SO and Gliding Stars (formerly SABAH) are some of the best athletic endeavours I have ever undertaken.
I will once believed we could figure out a good way to give everyone the exact same opportunities, if only humanity thought hard enough about how to do it.
Having later been diagnosed with a different genetic condition where one mutation unpredictably affects countless characteristics (pleiotropy), I now understand it isn't possible to integrate. There is no contest; nobody who wasn't born with such a steep uphill climb could ever compete with SO athletes. They are extraordinary beyond anything the mainstream could ever conceive. Their accomplishments are cosmic. Therefore, we'll have to settle with treating everyone with respect and human dignity, and if we ever get that far we can look into this again.
