Local resident returns from World Para Championships

Published 10:15 am Sunday, July 30, 2017

Milledgeville’s resident para-athletic expert has returned from another excursion.

For much of the past month, Bob Ewing, a co-owner of Amici and a wheelchair mechanic/assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Para Track and Field team, was in London assisting American athletes at the World Para Athletics Championship. Drawing together some 1,300 from roughly 100 countries, the event brought Ewing and the American delegation to the massive Queen Elizabeth Park venue constructed specially for the 2012 Olympic Games for nine days and more than 200 athletic events.

“They hold what we call the world championships every two years,” said Ewing from a booth near Amici’s kitchen. “Obviously, we just had the Olympics and the Paralympics in 2016, so this was kind of the first time that [a lot] of these athletes see their rivals. The world championships are just for track and field as opposed to the Paralympics, which includes cycling, swimming, basketball, and everything else, so this was kind of a smaller scale in terms of competition.”

For the past nine years, Ewing has assisted the U.S. Paralympic Team in a multitude of events and competitions. The son of former track and field head coach and wheelchair athletics pioneer Barry Ewing, Bob has coached in two Paralympics and several world and North American championships, helping some of the country’s most talented athletes represent the U.S. on the world stage.

“My area of expertise is mainly wheelchair track, and I assist them and make sure all equipment needs are met,” he said. “I was just telling my business partner that one day we had two crashes on the track, so I had to fix three of our team’s chairs on that one specific day, so it was pretty hectic.”

Although Ewing’s job running Amici prevents him from managing athletes full-time, few people can match his wealth of experience in wheelchair athletics. After his father opened Eagle Sportschairs, one of the country’s first athletic wheelchair supply businesses, in Snellville in 1980, the company eventually grew from a one-man operation to supplying chairs to international customers. With para-athletics still years away from the kind of recognition it enjoys today, the elder Ewing found himself at the forefront of the wheelchair athletics world and accepted a job with the team ahead of the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. After working for the team for more than a decade, Barry passed the torch to his son ahead of the 2008 games in Beijing.

“The position that I took with the team was actually the same one that he had,” said Bob of his father. “At one point it got to be that he wasn’t able to be gone from his business for 14 days at a time, so he kind of stepped out of the limelight. He offered up my name knowing that I knew nearly as much as he did, and if I didn’t know then I could easily call him and figure it out. They gave me a call right before Beijing, and that was my first real trip with the team.”

In July’s World Para Championships, U.S. athletes took home 59 total medals, the team’s best showing to date. One of the team’s sprinters, Mikey Brannigan, won two golds and a silver in his first-ever international competition. Ewing said the disabled athletes’ fame in the country was on par with that of other elite athletes, and hopes that American fans will grow to appreciate para-athletics as much as the British in the years to come.

“In London while we were there, the competition aired 24/7,” he said. “In the UK, their para-sports athletes are just as famous as their able-bodied ones. Every time a British athlete’s name was called to the starting line, the whole stadium would erupt. Hopefully, the United States will get to that point where we embrace wheelchair sports as much as the other sports we have.”