There are better runners out there than Bruce Gadd. There are faster sprinters and tougher marathon runners. Yet none of them has the sort of heart that Bruce has. You see, Bruce Gadd has no arms and legs.
Bruce was born to a single-father household; his mother died three months before his birth. His father was an eccentric former decathlete who believed that to be a great athlete one had to be raised by wild animals. Lacking any nearby wild animals, he abandoned Bruce in the seal pit at the nearby zoo. Though management initially objected, they backed off after seeing the incredible spike in ticket sales.
At the age of 21, Bruce entered his first race. He finished first in his age group, remarkable for someone who had never run before in his life. True, his victory was marred somewhat by the fact that the race was the Weehauken Elementary 1-Mile Tot Trot. True, he was the only entrant in his age group, “Eight and above.” But it was still an incredible accomplishment. The Tot Trot memorialized his stunning victory by imposing a ten-year-old age limit for competitors.
Then, tragedy struck Bruce in the face like a big snowball made of tragedy. His father, looking to reconnect with Bruce after years of neglect, had taken Bruce to
When he was 24, Bruce made a bold decision and enlisted in the army. Despite his handicap he became notorious as a risk-taker. He tempted fate, serving in the army’s explosives-handling unit and juggling chainsaws in his spare time. He later joined the army’s first-ever shark-wrestling squad.
Amazingly, Bruce completed his army service with all three limbs intact. To celebrate, he and his friends went to a local bar for drinks. When a particularly rough-looking fellow challenged Bruce to an arm-wrestling contest, Bruce foolishly accepted. And the rest is history. Specifically, it is HIST325: History of Freak Limb Loss.
The events surrounding the loss of Bruce’s right leg are particularly tragic. While he refuses to discuss the exact details, he does insist that it was a “freak accident that could have happened to anyone playing with a razor-edged Frisbee.”
He lost his fourth and final limb when he looked in the mirror one day, decided he had a look going, and went with it.
But he soon came to regret his decision. Bruce found that with only zero limbs, he couldn’t indulge in many of his favorite activities: running, for instance, or playing the xylophone with his knees. Distraught, he made several suicide attempts. However, he was repeatedly foiled when his gun jammed, his poison pills turned out to be Nexium ™, and the tiger he threw himself in front of turned out to be a vegetarian.
And so Bruce began to rebuild his life. He set a lofty goal: to regrow his limbs. Failing at this, he set himself a series of successively easier tasks until finally settling on eating a nice bowl of Cheerios. That accomplished, he scaled up the difficulty level to “running a marathon.”
Bruce’s first attempt to run a marathon was an unmitigated disaster. He failed to finish, or indeed even to start, or indeed even to remember to set his alarm clock. His next attempt was a mitigated disaster. Then, on his third attempt, he finally made history. He began to first armless and legless man ever to be ejected from a marathon for biting his opponent’s kneecaps.
Bruce recounted his story in a best-selling autobiography, My Life With Only Three Limbs. Subsequent events led him to publish several updated versions, including My Life With Only Three Limbs (Now With Only Two Limbs), My Life With Only Three Limbs (Now With Only Two Limbs (Now With Only One Limb)) and No Limb-it.
Bruce has been pushing his body to the limit to prepare for these Olympics. He has watched the Dustin Hoffmann film “Marathon Man” at least three times a day in order to get himself in the proper mental state. Now the time has come to put his training to the test. When you’re watching the marathon, look for Bruce Gadd. You’ll see him right at the intersection of Dreams, Destiny, and Quadruple Limb Loss.
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