The University of Illinois was always at the top of Amanda McGrory’s list of prospective schools. The Kennett Square, Pa., native knew Champaign was the place to go to receive a quality education while competing in a top-notch wheelchair sports program.

But the senior never knew being an Illini would bring her a bronze medal. Wait – make that gold.

On Friday morning in Beijing, McGrory won the women’s 5,000 meters in a tight race at the Paralympic Games, competing in the event’s final for the second time.

That’s right, the second time.

She originally won the bronze medal in Wednesday’s final, but the race was re-run because of a dramatic crash involving five of the 11 racers. And McGrory could not have been more satisfied her second time around, winning the gold with a time of 12 minutes, 29.07 seconds in her Paralympic Games debut.

“It’s definitely something I’ve dreamed about since I was a little kid,” McGrory said of the gold medal draped around her neck. “It’s one of those things sometimes that it’s hard to imagine because it’s so far off. Racing as a 10-year-old, it’s difficult to imagine reaching the level that I’m at today, but I’m glad that I stuck with it, and I think that the programs at Illinois, and especially the coach there, Adam Bleakney, have been instrumental in my success.”

Golden Girl

McGrory’s win was not free of controversy. In the first run of the finals, Switzerland’s Edith Hunkeler couldn’t control her compensator and collided with other racers around a turn with about 500m to go. A compensator, comparable to cruise control, is a small piece of steering equipment that holds a racer’s front wheel in a steady position while going around a turn. A racer moves the small bar to hold his or her front wheel throughout the turn, thus avoiding having to steer the whole way around.

“We were moving at about 17 miles per hour and we were only about a few inches apart, and so when someone moving that fast goes down there’s just absolutely no time to react,” McGrory said.

“If you hit (the compensator) too late coming out of the turn, that’d be a problem because you’ll cut in over the inside of the track to the inside lane and that’s exactly what happened. She was in lane two and didn’t come out of the turn straight.”

Hunkeler’s fault resulted in a pile-up effect for the rest of the field, but McGrory lucked out.

“I was able to avoid it almost completely,” McGrory said. “I was to her outside, and as soon as I saw her go down it was just a complete reflex reaction. I just got out of here as fast as I could.”

For those watching in the U.S., fans were just glad everyone was OK.

“It was probably one of the worst crashes we’ve ever seen,” said Maureen Gilbert, campus life coordinator for students with disabilities. “The pictures were amazing and the fact that nobody got seriously hurt.”

Wednesday’s crash resulted in protests from some the U.S. and Australia, and officials disqualified all results.

“Toward the end of the race, when we were coming into the final stretch with 100m left to go, the officials actually walked out onto the track in front of us during the final sprints,” McGrory explained. “There were some protests about that as well. They decided the best way to handle it would be to re-run the entire race.”

Paralympic Games rules say a race must be restarted if a crash happens within the first lap, however it is very rare for a race to be re-run if a crash happens toward the end.

“I was, of course, happy to finish my first Paralympic race and I ended up with a medal, but I thought that the results could have been more fair, especially because all of the women that went out in the crash and didn’t have a chance to finish it,” McGrory said.

Gilbert couldn’t be any prouder of her resident. She remained almost silent when confronting McGrory before she left for Beijing.

“What do you say to someone who’s reached that level of athleticism?” Gilbert asked.

The second time around, McGrory was able to focus on her own race, forcing her competitors to try and catch her rather than the other way around.

“I actually went into the second race feeling a little bit more confident than the first one,” McGrory said. “I was happy with the results from the first one obviously, but I didn’t run the race as well as I could have, so I was looking forward to the opportunity to run my best race. I spent a lot of time focusing on the mistakes that I made in the first one.”

But McGrory couldn’t help but feel bad for those racers who did not fare as well the second time around.

“I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to give up a gold medal knowing that you had to re-run the race and that you had to try to prove yourself again,” McGrory said. “I think that was very difficult. But in the end I really do think re-running the race was the best option. More than half of the field was out from the crash the first time.”

McGrory ended up getting her bronze medal too, though, after she finished in third place in the women’s 800m on Monday. Jessica Galli, another Illini, took the silver.

Rolling onto the scene

At the age of five, McGrory was paralyzed and diagnosed with a rare virus called transverse myelitis. After completing rehab, she began to attend a Variety Club Camp in southeastern Pennsylvania, where a new sports program was starting up for children with disabilities. When she turned 10, McGrory enrolled herself in a wheelchair sports program in Philadelphia, where she fell in love with the sport of basketball.

The rest was history.

McGrory, winner of the 2006 New York City Marathon (wheelchair division), said Illinois “was the best option” and she “was forever set on it.”

“The wheelchair sports program at the University of Illinois is incomparable,” the psychology major said. “It is by far one of the best programs for track and for basketball.”

She began her career at Illinois as a member of the women’s wheelchair basketball team, but eventually switched to the track.

Gilbert, who is informally known as the athletic director for University wheelchair sports, has seen remarkable change in McGrory’s personality from the moment she stepped foot on campus to her golden moment in Beijing.

“When I first met Amanda, she was shy and not very sure of herself as an athlete,” Gilbert said. “She was more into basketball at that time. She wasn’t really a racer.”

Gilbert said now, after participating in two University sports, McGrory approaches life with increased confidence.

McGrory credits much of her track success on the international stage to Bleakney.

“Adam is definitely one of the best coaches in the world,” McGrory said. “We have some of the best athletes, not only in the United States, but in the world, at the University of Illinois right now with Jessica Galli and Josh George and Anjali Forber-Pratt. These are all Paralympic gold medalists being coached by the same person. Kids from Germany and countries all over the world want to come to Illinois so they can be coached by him.”

Gilbert explained that Bleakney trains his athletes as hard as any Division I coach on campus.

“They train six days a week,” Gilbert said of the wheelchair track athletes. “They put 100 percent into their workouts because that’s the type of athletes they want to be.”

McGrory, who enrolled as a freshman at the University in fall 2004, will return to Champaign in January to begin her senior year.

Following the conclusion of the Paralympic Games on Wednesday, she will take the remainder of the semester off to travel and compete.

But for now, McGrory is more than satisfied in her performance against the best.

“This is something that only comes around every four years, so everyone is at their best right now,” McGrory said.