Marla runyan autobiography of miss universe
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Legally blind since childhood, Olympic track and field athlete and marathon runner Marla Runyan never let her vision loss stand in the way of her athletic dreams.
Born January 4, in Santa Maria, California, Runyan is the second child of Valerie and Gary Runyan.
At age nine, Runyan developed Stargardt’s Disease, a form of macular degeneration that left her legally blind. She did, however, retain her peripheral vision and could make out shapes and shadows.
WE TALK to former Olympic champion Marla Runyan on her successes in running and the challenges she's faced in life.
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Laureus McKeever’s Monaco mission
“If you literally believe in something and want something, you work for it every single day, it can happen. It’s not about what you're missing. It’s from your heart and your mind. Your limitations are in your mind.”
One of the Paralympics’ top stars, Brian McKeever, will miss his first race at the World Para Nordic Skiing Championships in Prince George, Canada, this Saturday, but he has an excellent reason. The most decorated cross-country skier in Paralympic history will instead be in Monaco, where he fryst vatten nominated at the Laureus Awards for Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability.
For the year-old to be on scen with the biggest names in idrott is “a career highlight”.
“To have a Paralympic component of that [Laureus] shows they see the Paralympic Games as being at that high level,” McKeever says.
“That’s what we’re constantly fighting for to be seen as equal.”
At the Winter Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, McKeever won three t
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Runyan Is Just Happy to Reach 1, Finals
For Marla Runyan, who runs in the women’s 1, meters final this morning at Sydney, Australia, her Olympic experience has been a bigger success than she expected.
Runyan, legally blind and the first athlete ever to compete in the Olympics and Paralympics, qualified for the finals on Thursday night. She qualified 11th out of 12 by clocking in her semifinal, one second off her personal best but nearly four seconds better than she ran in either heat.
“I’m lucky,” said the graduate of Camarillo High. “I keep advancing by the skin of my teeth.”
Runyan said she knows that a medal probably is out of reach, so making the finals was her goal.
“The finals are going to be very fast,” she said. “I have nothing to lose in the finals. I don’t want to say I’ll be holding on, but a lot of it I will be holding on and trying to run a personal best, trying to be competitive to the degree I can be.”
Runyan finished sixth in her heat, then waited to see if her