One instant I'm walking on the window sill, and the next instant, I don't know how many days later, I am lying in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of my body.
Joshua George
(CBS) One of America's top athletes is hoping
to win big in Beijing this summer as a sprinter and a marathoner. And he's doing
it all on wheels. CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports from
Champagne, Illinois. On Illinois country roads, Josh George grinds
out the miles. It's a whirl of raw power, and will power.
"I love to
train," George says. "I love to train."
He's America's premiere
wheelchair athlete.
"Out here, it's eyes on the prize?"
Strassmann asked George.
"Eyes on the prize," George said. "There
is always that ghost runner that is just out ahead of you."
George
fought to the top after a life-changing fall. When he was four, he tumbled out
an apartment window.
"How far did you fall?"
Strassmann asked.
"Twelve stories."
Landing on his feet, he somehow lived. But he was
paralyzed from the chest down.
"One instant I'm walking on the window
sill, and the next instant, I don't know how many days later, I am lying in a
hospital bed with tubes coming out of my body," he said.
He's now 24 --
and barely 100 pounds. Physically, he's an underdog, even for an elite
wheelchair athlete.
"It is all here to here for you?" Strassmann
asked, gesturing to his arms and chest.
"It's all here," George said.
"Chest, shoulders, triceps."
"There is no abs, no legs, no butt," said
George's trainer Adam Blakeny. "He doesn't have any of that. A lot of the guys
he is competing against can draw on the muscle groups for power."
But,
no one competes with his versatility. Good enough to start for the U.S. national
basketball team, he's also got three world records as a sprinter, and lately,
he's been competing in marathons.
"Look at this, three men in a dead
battle," exclaimed the announcer at one of George's marathon victories as he
neared the finish line in Chicago two years ago. "It is Joshua George, he is
from Champagne, Illinois, and he is going to take the title."
Ahead for
George is this summer's Beijing Paralympics. He could medal in six events. And
there's nothing he'd change. Nothing.
"Given the option to walk again,
would you do it?" Strassmann asked.
"No. If some doctor came up
with a magic pill and said, hey, you take this and you'll walk again. No.
There's no point."
No point at all, when winning is all he knows.