Editorial: Special Olympics are exceptional

There are lots of ways to define the word “special.”

There is distinct. There is different. There is “exceptionally good or precious.”

All of those could apply to the Special Olympics. The Pennsylvania Winter Games were held at Seven Springs Ski Lodge Sunday through Tuesday.

Every four years, the Olympic Games give the best athletes from countries around the world an opportunity to come together to compete against one another. They play for their nations. They play to prove their prowess. They play for pride and for peace.

The Special Olympics — a sporting organization for those with intellectual or physical disabilities — are distinctly different.

The Special Olympics holds competitions at local, state, national and international levels, but the real contest isn’t in a pool or on a ski slope. It’s inside, where someone who faces challenges every day finds the strength to take one step more than seemed possible.

Where the goal in the Olympics is the podium, the goal in the Special Olympics is the finish line. The victory isn’t over someone else, even in a race against other athletes. It is a defeat of the restrictions of a world that says far too often that someone with a disability can only go this far and shouldn’t expect more.

For many Olympic athletes, that moment in the spotlight wearing a medal might be the culmination of a life’s work. For many in the Special Olympics, that moment of victory over their own limitations might be a spark that lights a fire to do more. If this is possible, who knows what else is out there?

In Pennsylvania, almost 18,000 athletes train and compete in 27 Special Olympics sports. There are more than 6,000 coaches and 582 competitions in the state, with this week’s Winter Games one of the largest.

“All these athletes train year-round, and it gives them an opportunity to show how much they can do. I think a lot of people underestimate our athletes,” said Mike Ermer, Western Competition director for the Special Olympics of Pennsylvania.

That kind of effort is exceptionally good. And the fact that these athletes get up when they fall and try again and again and again?

That’s special.