Scot Hollonbeck

A Paralympian's Oral History

SCOT HOLLONBECK

1992 Paralympic Games – Barcelona 1996 Paralympic Games – Atlanta 2000 Paralympic Games – Sydney 2004 Paralympic Games – Athens

– Track and Field –

1992 Olympic Games – Barcelona 1996 Olympic Games – Atlanta 2000 Olympic Games – Sydney 2004 Olympic Games – Athens

– Track and Field Exhibition –

Interviewed by: Alan Abrahamson and Wayne Wilson January 10, 2019 Los Angeles, California

This oral history may not, in whole or in part, be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated, or converted to any electronic or machine-readable form without prior written consent of the LA84 Foundation

www.LA84.org LA84 Foundation 2141 W. Adams Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90018 SCOT HOLLONBECK

Wayne Wilson Interviewer: Scot, thank you for being here. Today is January 10, 2019. Alan Abrahamson and Wayne Wilson are interviewing Scot Hollonbeck, who is a U.S. Paralympian in track and field, who competed in every Olympic Games and Paralympic Games from 1992 through 2004.

Alan Abrahamson Interviewer: I'm Alan Abrahamson. Great to be here again on January 10, 2019. Scot, thank you for being here with us today. Let's start as we like to do these kinds of things at the very beginning. Where in the world is Rochelle, Illinois?

Scot Hollonbeck: What? you never heard of it. Well, it's one of the best kept secrets in the Northern Hemisphere for sure, to this day. It is west of Chicago about 90 miles. And, no one seems to know where it is other than the 9,811 people who live there.

Abrahamson: Rochelle, with one L or two?

Hollonbeck: Two.

Abrahamson: Were you born and raised there?

Hollonbeck: I was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, compliments of the Vietnam War, but really from Illinois. My families, both mother and father, from central Illinois.

Abrahamson: Champaign or further south?

Hollonbeck: A little further south but then west of there. So, it's the Amish part of the state.

Abrahamson: Rantoul-ish?

Hollonbeck: Oh, close, very close. Well, little more. Forty miles from Rantoul, just south of Decatur, Illinois, if you know where that is so. Even smaller amazingly well-kept secrets of the universe, Bethany and Sullivan, Illinois. Fabulous place to grow up as a kid. We used to go to my grandparents' little farm and spend our summers there and worked in the strawberry fields and we had a blast. When I say "we" my sister, and I have an identical twin brother, Sean.

Abrahamson: Are you the younger or the older twin?

Hollonbeck: I am the older.

Abrahamson: And, were you the king of the house?

Hollonbeck: We shared our monarchy, so it wasn't even really a monarchy, you'd have to ask him.

Abrahamson: And, how much younger is your sister?

Hollonbeck: My sister is nine months older, excuse me, 10 months older.

Abrahamson: Wait, there were three of you born within 10 months?

Hollonbeck: Yeah. We had Irish triplets I think is the term. Evidently according to my mother and some unsubstantiated scientific research.

If you have two kids within a year, you're twice as likely to have a mental breakdown in your lifetime and if you have three it's something like six times as likely. She's still working that.

Abrahamson: Serious question here. We were just watching home movies in our house over the holidays. What was the noise level in your house growing up?

Hollonbeck: It was pretty high. When you have an identical twin and a 10-month-old sister and all of them are type A and wired like 240 volts, it was pretty full-on. I don't know, but I think my mother must have spent most of the '70s and early '80s on some kind of psychiatric medications, but she's well now.

Abrahamson: So, what kind of work did your parents do?

Hollonbeck: My father was an optometrist. He's passed away. My mother was predominantly a stay-at-home mother.

She also worked at the optometrist office and did a few different jobs after my parents divorced. They ranged from realtor to working at the slaughterhouse. They were really good union jobs. Didn't make it very long at the slaughterhouse. Another one of the amazing businesses and the best kept secret in Rochelle, Illinois.

Abrahamson: And, what kind of environment would, did you grow up in? I mean, the way we grow up tends to shape the way we are as adults. What were the rules in your house? I grew up in rural Ohio. So, I think rural Ohio and rural Illinois are a lot alike.

I think that Midwestern values thing is a real thing. But, I also had a hard ass for a dad. I was raised to say, "yes sir," "yes ma'am" to people, to open doors for women and to generally be respectful of people in my community. How do you think growing up in rural Illinois helped shape you in any life in this very crazy loud house?

Hollonbeck: Sure. That's a great question. I think that we had a few rules. One was, was it kind? Is it necessary? Is it true? Is it of service to others? So, if it didn't qualify as that, you might have some redirection.

My grandfather on my father's side was a drill sergeant and grew up in the Depression and was a trained military personnel and he was he was definitely a hard ass. My father was very strict as well. But, they all lightened up and I think being the second child helped a little bit.

My mother was a good protective shield for us. And, we were always having so much fun that whenever we got in trouble there was usually a lot of laughter before the spanking started, which kind of help with some of that.

We were expected to give our best, to work hard and work. I try to explain to my daughter. I literally started working at age 5 and 6. We would get paid in the summers to work in the fields. So, I've done about every kind of manual labor there is, including detasseling corn.

We worked a lot of migrant labor that would come through town. We had a Del Monte factory in town and so it is a different world.

Wilson: So, in addition to working the fields as an 8-year-old, how did sports fit into your life?

Hollonbeck: From day one. My grandfather and father were very engaged in multiple athletic endeavors throughout their lifetimes. So, we were encouraged and did that as well. You name a sport, I probably did it. That was what we did. We basically went to school to play and then also do sports. When I did have my accident in 1984 I was on a summer swim program, summer track team. And, I played baseball competitively, and then I also worked for Del Monte in the fields during the day and so that was that was kind of a snapshot of what things looked like.

Abrahamson: Were you a competitive athlete?

Hollonbeck: Yeah, I think having an identical twin is a wonderful advantage because you basically have your own genetic clone that is the same speed as you and essentially wired the same as you. So, we pushed each other throughout, literally in the womb for survival.

My mother didn't know she was having twins until a week before. It was the '60s. You know, it's like, "Oh, there's two in there." She thought she was having an 8- pound baby. She was having a 6 and a 3 something. My brother Sean barely survived because I was hogging all the nutrients. But, once he got out and caught up, then that's what we did. We just ran and pushed each other constantly. It was great growing up. You're expected to get out of the house and play and we that's what we do. We ran around like a pack of wolves and hyenas with all the older

kids in the neighborhood. It was great. So, you were always being pushed by not just your age group peers, but you know up to 10 years older than you, so it's a great way to become an athlete.

Abrahamson: Before we get to the accident, which will be my next question, you literally I'm sure had one of these childhoods – where Rochelle was one of these towns where you could go out and just be home by dark?

Hollonbeck: That's all we did. We were fed and got out of the house to go run around.

Abrahamson: If I know the story, you were 14 when this accident happened. Can you elaborate?

Hollonbeck: It was 1984. I was 14 and I loved competing in sport. I had set a swim team record the night before my accident, in butterfly. Everything on television was about the LA '84 Games and so I was dreaming of one day being an Olympian.

Abrahamson: It was July of 1984?

Hollonbeck: Yeah, July of 1984. So, that day's swim, the night before the practice the next morning was optional. Practice started at 6:00 a.m. And, I'd been working that summer and saved up enough money to get a bike.

My father had gotten us into cycling at a very young age, 8. We did our first 273- mile bike ride at the age of 8, when we had to carry our own gear. We slept outside as well. I wanted to upgrade my bike because it was a junker. I had gotten hold of a Schwinn too that night, right after the swim meet. So, I was excited about that. We wanted to ride to practice the next day, which was the first day that I conned my parents into letting us ride. They were anxious about it. We lived 5 miles out of town.

When my brother woke up, he said that he was tired, and I probably would have skipped that day, as well, other than the fact I had the new bike. So, I kicked him one more time and I left, said, "You snooze, you lose." I ran downstairs, crammed a bowl of Grape Nuts into my mouth and headed out. When I did, I saw a vehicle coming on this country road and I made it about 200 yards, which was back close to our house, and that's where I was hit.

Abrahamson: Just to go slowly through this, you're 14 years old, and you're on your brand-new bike.

Hollonbeck: Well used, but brand new to me.

Abrahamson: Obviously, it's 1984 so you did not have a helmet.

Hollonbeck: I did not have a helmet on.

Abrahamson: Who hit you? What car were they driving? And, how did they hit you?

Hollonbeck: I was hit by a man that was in a full-size Ford van, one of the service vehicles.

Abrahamson: Like a white – ?

Hollenbach: Yeah, it was – was it white? I don't remember the color. I know that if you look at the full-size vans, the hood is about this height.

Abrahamson: So, that was early in the morning?

Hollonbeck: Yeah, it was 5:00. I was hit at 5:23 a.m., which is sun-up in Illinois. It's different time zone. The individual who hit me had been in the bar all night. I'll leave it at that. I was lucky it was a van in some ways because he was doing about 60 miles an hour. When you're on a road bike, the height that he hit me, I folded back onto that hood and they had their short little hoods. That's just sort of where my torso indented into his hood, but it kept me from getting run over in some ways and so I went up into the side as opposed to under, or I wouldn't be sitting here.

And also my parents heard the accident, because it was a cool morning and so their windows were actually open. The house only about 100 yards from home when I was hit after going down the drive. So, my dad knew immediately, as did my mom, as did my brother.

The neighbor was a paramedic and worked for the fire department. He went on to be the fire chief. He was out there immediately. So, I was very lucky that some folks were there.

But, basically, I was twisted on my bike. If you can imagine, my legs are going this way and my torso was going that way. I was in shock. When I woke up there was a light rain, and I had slid on the side of the road then into the gravel. So, I was skinned up pretty good. I didn't really even notice that. The only thing I cared about when I got up was like, "You have got to be kidding me."

When I saw Tom, who is a paramedic, I remember thinking, "Seriously it's my brand-new bike." I cracked a joke, "Where did this guy get his driver's license in a crackerjack box?"

I could tell Tom was pretty serious, but he was actually laughing, which I thought was so important you know. In times of trauma you don't know how bad it is until read other people's faces. And, so my dad came up and he was a poker player. So, he was pretty good. My mom showed up and that's when I knew there was a problem.

My dad asked, "Scot can you feel your legs?" When I saw my mom, that's when I knew it's pretty bad.

Abrahamson: Could you feel your legs?

Hollonbeck: No, I couldn't feel my legs. I think then I looked at my arm and it was just like a cheese grater. So, they got me into the ambulance and went to the hospital, but they were like, "We can't we can't deal with this guy." So, they took me on a helicopter to the nearest trauma center,

Abrahamson: In DeKalb or somewhere else?

Hollonbeck: Rockford, it was in Rockford, Illinois. They didn't think I would live. I did.

I remember when I woke up after the surgery. I'd eaten that morning. So, they couldn't intubate me. I was doing pretty good until that phase. You can just tell the energy around the people. The people when they were prepping me for the surgery, which took like five or six hours, which of course is the worst thing you can do for somebody with a spinal cord injury because you get all that swelling your spinal cord so – .

Now, on the ambulance, they'll give you a steroid just to get that swelling down. I always wonder how much more return I would have had. As a paraplegic you take it even if your toe will move a little bit. I get a little functional ability in my right hip flexor, but sitting there for six, seven hours did not help at the point that it went with the surgery.

When they intubated me, though, the guy had never done it and he hit the back of my throat pretty good. So you know you're coughing up blood and that's when I remember the real fight or flight part of it came in and I actually, unfortunately, hit the guy. So, you have like six people holding me down. That was the last thing I remember before I woke up. You're just covered all these tubes and this white room. I remember that E.R. nurse to this day. Her name was Amy.

We're writing because you can't do anything. It's just this little grease board. I said, "What's the deal?" And, I ask her, "Did I break my back?" She responded, "The doctor will tell you." I said, "Give me a break. Just let me know what's going on." She paused and I already knew the answer.

For me the idea of not walking again wasn't what was bothering me. The idea of not running again, swimming again, not cycling, not being an athlete was what was the scary part of paralysis.

Fast forward a day or two and you're just putting it all together. It was beautiful coming up in a small community like Rochelle because you have so many people and so much support. It was wonderful. And the whole time the only thing on television – we had three channels – was NBC and Bob Costas. The fourth day after I was paralyzed, I was doing what I called face time, where you're on a

Stryker bed frame, where they flip you every few hours and if you're lucky, they don't wrap your IV cords up when they flip you, which happened twice, and they rip out your IV sideways, which is unpleasant, to say the least. So, I'm doing face time, I just started, it took me four hours and they said, "Coming up next to me the women's 800-meter wheelchair race."

I haven't sat in a wheelchair yet. My mom was in the room, and I go, "What did they say?" She said, "800-meter wheelchair race, something about wheelchair athletes." I was like, "isn't that an oxymoron?" because in my mind that didn't exist. I had never been exposed to it. I had no concept of it. I couldn't fathom that. I guess my life – I was going to was going to spent writing really bad books or something, if I was lucky.

I had to negotiate with the staff, who just started their shift. Of course they didn't want to flip me over. So, I said, "Look here's the deal. I'm going to hit this button every three minutes, or just let me watch this thing." So, they did.

They flipped me over so I could watch it and I just stared. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. You know, I just really couldn't believe that. I didn't see a bunch of disabled people. What I saw were these amazing women in this competitive event, where they had clearly trained and they were clearly athletes. I saw a stadium. Love it and I thought, "Wow." So it gets over and my mom's like, "What do you think?" And, I was like, "Yeah, I think I'd like to try to do that one day. I think I'd like to go to the Olympics." So, that was it. I was in many ways incredibly lucky.

I should add, we were raised Methodist, but it was sort of you got to do what you wanted. As we became teenagers it was our choice. So, I had chosen to get baptized that summer as well, which was 10 days before my accident. I was putting all these pieces together. But, that was very instrumental for me to see and be exposed to what people can do. I'm very grateful that I witnessed it and that that could shift what was going on in my life at such an early age.

Wilson: So, almost immediately you are, if I could use the word, inspired –

Hollonbeck: Yup.

Wilson: – to take up wheelchair sports, wheelchair racing. How long was it between the time that you saw the race in the 1984 Olympic Games until you actually got in the chair and started competing, and what process did you have to go through to get there?

Hollonbeck: Well, back in the '80s they put rods in your back. And, I slid on the ground, which had gouged a big chunk of my thigh out and then it got infected. And then I was wearing this clamshell brace in a wheelchair. My feet were up and reclined. It was pretty bad. They don't do that now. You can get into rehab and get going. But

they were like – I remember then saying, "Well, yeah, maybe within a year you can do this."

But, again just by complete fluke, a guy by the name of Jim Knaub, who is a big racer from Southern California – he had been on "Happy Days." Lived in LA here for many, many decades. He was going around to rehab centers. He had won Boston and they would have him come in with his racing wheelchair. This guy shows up the last week I'm in rehab in Chicago at Marianjoy – I got to sit in his chair in my clamshell brace and meet this Jim Knaub. It just blew me away. So, I sat in the chair.

When I got back is when it really started all setting in. There just wasn't anything to do. There were no programs. The high schools and the schools and the park districts did nothing at that point in time. Frankly at this point in time, there's very few that still do. And, so the way that most people are exposed to sports certainly at that phase of the game there weren't all these clubs that you see now. It was it was predominantly through schools, through your church, through your park district. But, there was nothing.

So, when I got back – and I was told I couldn't do anything for a year really. That was not good because I went from being on the playing field to watching my identical twin, my peers doing these things and you're just sitting there.

There's a whole another crowd that shows up and there's a whole another set of pastimes that emerge. There's a reason that people with disabilities are – have the highest levels of substance abuse, the lowest levels of education, the lowest levels of employment and the highest rates of suicide of any minority in this country. Now they can be multiple minorities on top of having a disability, but it's because of the lack of institutionalized opportunities that occur. When I say "institution," I mean, park districts, school districts, et cetera et cetera. The very first phase, I got back to our school. Our school system had never had a person with a disability because they would ship them off to a town 25 miles away, to go to an accessible school. Yet by design and choice, they didn't want to be accessible because they'd have to deal with the kids with disabilities.

My dad put an end to that. He was very big into service. He was heavily involved in Rotary, president of Rotary, president of the park district, super engaged in our community and he was like, "No, no, no. We're not going to send our son to another school while his daughter and my identical twin brother and everybody he's grown up with is here."

Well, they couldn't even figure how to get me into it. So, we were immediately engaged in beginning to advocate for how you can even just go to school. Forget about sport.

It wasn't easy because they didn't want all the kids with disabilities going to the

schools, pain in their butt. We worked it out. I had to have them move my classes. I mean, just to put it in perspective, the school that I went to had been built over 100 before. It had 11 levels. They would have to move classes and they weren't happy about it. But, it was a bit of a shall we say, public relations issue for the school board system and people who we knew as well.

So, that's going on. And, then my swim coach, Diane McNeely, amazing woman that we also knew from camping and canoeing and just crazy activities that we had gotten to do as kids with her and her family. She stayed on me. So, five months out, she was following what was going on with the doctors. The doctors had said, "Well he could get in the pool, but you still got to wear the brace." Hard to swim paralyzed let alone having your brace on. Then, she was like, "Well, here you can go," I said, "I don't know, Diane. How are we – this is Rochelle, Illinois, we don't even have a swimming pool."

I literally learned how to swim in a lake, called Spring Lake. There was no pool. Then we swam at a hotel, which was not even 20 yards, it was a 19-yard long pool.

I said, "Diane how am I going to get into the building?" She goes, "Yeah, I thought about that. John Murphy is on the football team. He'll meet you."

I didn't want to get into a swimsuit. At that point I was really getting self-conscious about my body. At this point, I had made a shift. I was under the bleachers, drinking and smoking weed. I didn't want to do it. My parents were behind the scenes trying to set up more opportunities to engage and participate.

Diane stayed on me, she had an answer for everything. I go, "Well, Diane, where am I going to change? The locker room is in the basement." "See I thought about that. Well there's the closet, where they have all the pool chemicals, but we'll move some of those because they're toxic. And, that's where the filters at, but we made a little space. You can change in there." I was like, "Well how am I going to shower afterwards?" She goes, "I thought about that. We'll bring two five-gallon buckets up. I'll go get them and I'll just dump them over you on the side of the pool." I asked, "How am I going to get into the pool?" "Yeah, I thought about that. I talked to the physical therapists and they said, it's fine if I lift you and set you on a kick board, that's basically foam. Then we'll just get you in." I 'm like, "How am I going to get out?" She goes, "I'll help you out. We'll figure it out." So, I could clearly tell Diane wasn't going to take no for an answer.

So, I got in the pool and I started swimming and it was awesome! I was to dead last. The 6-year-olds were killing me, but she just, as with everyone on her team, she doesn't really care about where you placed, what your time was. It was, "Here's what you achieved. Here's your result. Now we're going to work on that result." Incrementally, I could just see these little advancements.

Then she also goes, "Oh hey, I made you this." Then she opens this bag up and there's a pool buoy. She had cut up her old knee brace, cut it in half and stitched it onto the pool buoy so she'd get my legs to float because she knew that was going to be a challenge. And, so that was it.

I had had some amazing physical therapists that had got me in the pool in rehab, and there was a community there at Marianjoy. But, I also knew the big community was at the Rehab Institute in Chicago. That's where a lot of sports stuff going on. It was a big trip, two-hour drive into town.

Diane got me out and I started getting stronger. I then joined the track team at the end of that school year as a manager. I'd tape everybody up, and I just started pushing. That's how I kicked off.

From there, I went to a summer camp. In the summer, there would be these disabled events. It was called [a] wheelchair track meet. I met one of the women who had raced in that race, Sharon Hedrick and the U of I team, which the University of Illinois, has been leading these types of adaptive issues since the '40s, 1949. I met Brad Hedrick and Marty Morris, who are two amazing coaches. Both have retired at this point and so I could put my eye onto something. They're like, "Come to our summer camp." There were only a few things a year, but it was something. That's how I started.

Then I got the bug and you know that other activity was done. From there, though, after my freshman year of just pushing around circles after I taped up people's ankles and whatever needed to be taped on the track team, my parents said, "Hey, well could he just do something? Could he have an event? Could he get in the 800? Something?" The coaches at first were like, "OK, yeah, sure. What would it hurt right?" But, of course the Illinois High School Sports Association, the National Federation for High School Sports, the NCAA, everybody else in there, they're barely getting through Title IX. They certainly didn't want to see anything related to this and frankly were overtly opposed to it. I mean, it wasn't even quiet.

Sophomore year I got in. My grandfather who still had a high school record in the 800 meters said, "Hey, here's the deal. We want to get you a racing wheelchair." They'd found one that was used. It was guy from a guy who lived here in LA as well, Bob Molinatti. He ended up being a commentator for ESPN over the years and a big wheelchair racer. We had the same size and he had this used chair that I got for $380 and shipping. My grandfather paid for it. He said, "I want you to break my record in the 800," which he had for 52 years at his high school. I was like, "OK." So, that was a goal, right? So, that's where it started. I did break his record and then in '92 we can we can chat about that was the first time a wheelchair had actually broke the world record, which was Sebastian Coe's time at that point, in the '92 Paralympic Games. So, it was a lot of fun to call him at that point and have that conversation.

But, it was very difficult after sophomore year. We started running into more and more challenges with the school system related to transportation, and related to being in physical education. At that point they're like, "Well you can't do P.E." The reason I couldn't do P.E. was that I'd have to go up to seven of the various levels to get to P.E. and the guys locker room was impossible. They just kind of pushed back. They were like, "Well, you could hurt somebody else," was always the big deal.

So, it started and my parents at that point, not quite a year-and-a-half into having to get a master's degree in advocacy. And, they said, "No, he's going to do physical education. It's a part of the equal Education for All Handicapped Children Act," which thank goodness had been, had been authored at that point. Then it started to get contentious.

So, then they said, "You can't be on a track team. One, you'll void the warranty on our track, because you're a wheeled vehicle, and two you're a danger to everyone else and yourself." It was a leverage point, so that's where we had to make some decisions.

This went on for years and we ended up getting involved with a local advocacy group that then put us in touch with the law firm, which is Jenner and Block, one largest law firms in the country. And, the woman who went on to run their pro-bono department happened to have just graduated law school and I think I was one of her first cases. They said, "Clearly they're violating the law and we'll represent you." So, we ended up coming back in with them. The school system that reached out to the High School Athletic Association, who they lawyered up. Everybody lawyered up. That went to federal court.

Abrahamson: The lawsuit was filed in the Federal Court of Chicago?

Hollonbeck: Yeah, then it wasn't settled until I was in college.

Abrahamson: You were how old when the lawsuit was filed?

Hollonbeck: I think I was 17 because we didn't file a lawsuit at first. We went through the high school educational system. The department of education had a process that we went through and they found in our favor. Then the school district effectively appealed that. So, then we actually filed, I believe end junior year, first part of senior – no it was junior year. It was a bit of a big deal. The Chicago Tribune ran it. The New York Times, we ended up going out. NBC had us out. Maria Shriver used to have a show called, "Kids Are People Too." We went out there, meeting Arnold and a bunch of other folks. It got picked up. It was the first time a student with a disability had filed for the right to participate in extracurricular sports with a disability.

Abrahamson: So, all this time did the school that you participate or not?

Hollonbeck: Under an injunction. Then we would show up at other schools. Then those schools would boycott. I mean, it was classic. They would say that I couldn't get on the bus unless I could do it myself. So, I would crawl onto the bus, or we would open the back door. There were like all these like, "Well, we can't help you get on the bus because it would be a lie."

It was a game and it was a process. Here was the good news: It was training grounds for me. I learned a lot. My parents were – part of the deal was if we were going to do decide to be actively engaged in the management of the lawsuit, meaning filing things and fighting things, which was great because I had done that for my father and his office as a kid growing up. I worked in his office. I answered phones. We filed patient records. Looking back I get what he was doing. It was all like training.

Abrahamson: Let me interrupt. This is all great stuff, Scot. I sometimes think that the root of all of our problems lies and our inability to teach each and every one of us with human dignity.

Part of the challenge here was that they were going to make you crawl onto the bus. At the risk of asking the most obvious question of all time. How did that make you feel?

Hollonbeck: Great question. At that point, I was going to crawl on that bus, because it was what needed to be done and what they were doing was wrong. So, I shifted it. I didn't care what I looked like. I cared that we were going to make a stand on the issue. It wasn't about how I felt.

When I started, I got to start behind like the 800-meter runners and go. Then, what they said was, "You're a danger." So, I had to race alone. Racing alone at the track meet was a little more self-conscious, or unpleasant. The other problem was this is a school track meet. So, it's a school night. Now if I wanted to do two events, two or three different teams, 150 people had to sit there and wait for me to do an 800 and a 1,500. Forget about the 5,000. I felt pretty self-conscious about taking up everyone's else's time just so that I could do my event. There were times where that was actually harder than crawling on to a bus. We went to one track meet. We were on the way and they told the whole team well we can't go. No one can go to the track meet because the other school says they don't want a wheelchair racer. So, that was an interesting moment because that wasn't fair for me to prevent other kids from pursuing their goals.

The whole team came out and did a petition and said, "We don't want to go." That was a beautiful thing to see how other people would come in. Then one of the kids wrote a petition that a third of the school signed that they felt like the school board and the school leadership was behaving in a way that was effectively inhumane and unethical.

That was hilarious. You could imagine they didn't like that, but it was a beautiful thing to see how people wanting to be more inclusive could work. A lot of things have been done. Inappropriate things have been done in a desire to make things better or to help a toxic charity, but it was it was very interesting and it affected my life profoundly.

I started reading existentialism and philosophy. Then decided I would – wanted to become a lawyer – was what I thought. All these things shape us, shape our lives so profoundly.

We got through it. I had to race alone for the rest of the last two years of high school, but it just made me want to be better. It was amazing to lose something. I think back, having lost something that was incredibly important to me. I hadn't reached the point where I was burned out on sports, which I think happens and unfortunately happens way too much now because of a lot of the way we're approaching sport. The intensity of it and you know the singular focus, I still love it. Here I lost it all, like boom, dead stop. You go from being in the middle of becoming normalized as a young male in our culture to you're not even really a male at that point. You're literally out of the river, out of the boat, on the bank watching and observing. Then I got to kind of sort of be trailing behind the boat in a dinghy and watching from afar. It shifts here, and I think I'm very grateful for that at this point of my life. I was then locking a lot of it up. A lot of anger, resentment, all that stuff, it came out for years later.

When we got to college, I thought I finally made it. I'm going to the University Illinois and they have these programs and it's amazing and impactful coaches. Then I looked around and realized all the things we ran into. You know, we'd have to raise money to go to tournaments. We would do fundraisers to buy equipment and uniforms, which was fine with it first, but after freshman year we weren't encouraged, we were almost forced.

You had to be on the Disabled Students Organization and you had to work for not just the jocks, but all students with disabilities. We raised money for the independent housing centers. I mean, it was it was great. The ethos and that approach. You talked about being raised in the Midwest and I'm not saying this doesn't occur elsewhere, but there was a big part of, "You are going to give back and serve and understand that we've got a long way to go with this movement." It was an expectation from – I don't think most NCAA athletes are expected to do that sort of thing at this point. Then I asked the question, "Well wait a second, why don't we have some level of college athlete scholarship?"

You know, it's hard when you work for an organization to advocate. If I've learned anything over the years, they cannot advocate or they will lose their job, or there will be consequences. So, I called up Jenner and Block, asked a couple of questions, sniffed around, read the bylaws for the NCAA and their mission

statement and it was clear they were violating their own. They were in contradiction with their own stated raison d'être. So, we added up the number of students with disabilities at the University of Illinois against the total number of the student population and we went to the ombudsman as student athletes.

Keep in mind this is right as the high school lawsuit was ending and we said, "We would really like you guys to figure out how we could get – I think we wanted 3.4 scholarships." And, we got them!

Abrahamson: Did you hear of Title IX and are you killing us?

Hollonbeck: Yeah, but that's always been the answer, "We're still trying to figure out Title IX ,"and that's where this whole 35-year journey. It's always been, "Well, we've got to look at it from a racial perspective, or a gender perspective," and we were always that last thing on the totem pole.

It was literally the same situation through the high schools, the collegiate and then into the Olympic and Paralympic movement.

Abrahamson: Do you ever get tired of being the last on the totem pole? Just to be really direct about it.

Hollonbeck: I mean, that's like saying do you get tired of your life? Yeah, absolutely. I tried to organize a boycott in the 2000 Games to get all the athletes to not race in the Olympic event. That's all we've got. I mentioned to you guys I was up all night last night because there was a workers protest outside our hotel. I get it. I tried to organize one.

Do I get tired of it? Yeah, I qualified for four Olympic finals, one event every disabled athlete from every sport went for that event. I don't care if you thought you were a sprinter or a marathoner, you went for the men's 1,500 or the women's 800. There was only one, even if you are as swimmer.

I might have swam now if I showed up in the Paralympic movement. There wasn't swimming really, effectively. Four times I wasn't allowed to march. I was told I couldn't stay in the village.

We didn't qualify as second-class citizens. That was frustrating? Did I refuse in the end to win medals for this country? Instead I got drunk the night before the 2000 Games. Organized the, an athletes' – one of us to sit on the line or raise the issue.

Meanwhile, the Australian athletes carried the flag in for the Olympic team, the wheelchair racer. They marched. They were basically for inclusion. So, your Commonwealth countries, Canada, UK, all these were so progressive, so much so that many of us looked at actually – you know how the Cuban athletes used to defect and come here? We looked at defecting to Switzerland. I'm not making this

up. I mean, what are you going to do? Did I get tired? Yeah.

It was what it was, you have to recognize this wasn't just about winning medals. These are great. I love training. I train to this day. I'm still training, I'm 50. I took seven years to get to Kona Ironman and I'd like to do one more. I want to do Boston in my 50s. I love training. It's just kind of how I'm wired right.

Wilson: What are those medals?

Hollonbeck: This is a medal from the exhibition event in Atlanta. I was living there at the time. I was working for Coca-Cola and the worldwide sports marketing department. Coke was great on many levels, other than when they were sort of behind the scenes blocking the Paralympics because they didn't want Pepsi to get it. But, it's business and I understand some of that. This was a lifelong dream. I was 40, 36 miles of training and something like 12,000 workouts, four surgeries, umpteen crashes and broken bones.

This is Barcelona. I'd love to tell that story if we have time –

Abrahamson: We have time. Let's take a break. You can tell the story of both medals and any other stories you want.

Wilson: Scot, you competed at four Olympic Games and four Paralympic Games, is that correct? Does that mean that in each year you competed in two different events that you would first compete in the Olympic Games and then the Paralympic Games?

Hollonbeck: I did compete in four Olympic Games and four Paralympic Games and they were separate events. The Olympics would end usually two-to-four weeks before the Paralympics. There were separate qualifiers, so you could compete and go to try to make it to that Olympic final, which only eight people did, men or women.

You might not go to the Paralympics or vice versa. I was the only one to make four of those Olympic finals, I would've rather won a few more medals, but I did make four of them. So that was a big focus. I felt for a long time that the Olympic event was where you could reach the broadest audience. Even for a lot of us athletes with disabilities, you wanted to go there, that was the big show. That changed for me in '92 I when I went to the Olympic event, then I went to the Paralympic event and I actually raced two more people in the Paralympics than I did in the Olympics for the same event. It was the 1,500, same distance. Separate, same distance, but different sporting events.

It would be like going to a World Championship and Olympic Games. My eyes just opened up about what the Paralympics could be globally in '92, certainly nationally as well. It was amazing.

They had done a survey before the Games. They asked I think it was like 3,000 Spaniards. They were trying to get a feel for how they related to people disabilities. One of the questions on the survey was, "Would you rather be dead or disabled," and 84 percent of them responded they'd rather be dead. So, I thought, "This is going to be a really tough crowd." But, when we got there, they just exploded and lit up. I was like, "Huh. OK. I need to redo the calculus." And moving forward – it's hard to peak for two Games that distance apart. We had to go back to the drawing table with the coach and really decide where we wanted to peak and what does that look like. We're going to split into two micro peaks, one for each Games, or when you're going to really go for it.

As the years went on, I chose to peak for the Paralympics. I felt that this maybe wasn't as important in the United States at that point. We were still struggling with some otherness, but certainly globally it was. It was as big an honor for me as an athlete, if not more, to go to the Paralympics and go through the full qualifier semi and final at the Games. Whereas in the Olympics, we'd have to do our qualifier and semi before the Games.

Wilson: We'd like to hear a little bit more about each of the Games. Before we do that, you talked about coaching and training and peaking. Could you talk a little bit about what a typical training week was like when you were an elite athlete?

Hollonbeck: Sure. I will say in the mid-'90s and late '90s we were probably overtraining based on some of the theory that's out there now. So, I'm not recommending this for young athletes, but on average we were training six days a week and three of those would be doubles. I started paying attention to diet and rest very seriously in 1990.

I mean, I paid attention before, but I just didn't have a lot of information. But, I actually tried out for the '88 Games. I think this is a kind of a good part of the story. I went to the Olympic trials. It was in Illinois that year – let's start in high school. In high school I swam, and then I did track. Then I had met the University of Illinois coach Marty Morris, who gave me workouts as a high schooler. I started doing all the college workouts at that level, and I mean, I would get up and my friends would ride the bike and we would train for school, when it wasn't track season. I also then joined the traveling teams for the Rehab Institute of Chicago. That's all I did was compete and train throughout the year. I started getting pretty good. I went from like dead last – I think I mentioned to you I'm pushing around the track and I was dead last always. I got better and better, and by senior year I was starting to regularly finish in the top couple of guys in the middle distances. Now keep in mind one of those is my identical twin brother, finally caught him, so I might have had a very strong case that I would be running that fast as well. He'd blown his knee out during freshman year. He was an amazing runner. He was doing sub-fives going into high school. He was a good runner. I guess it's in the family a little bit. Then as I got better one of the other arguments for me not competing was I had an advantage, which I thought was interesting because here's my identical twin

brother who I was barely beating. I digress a little bit there. I trained a lot, I was very strong. Weight training, cardio training, a lot of mileage, then I had the cross- training. So, I said, "You know, what I'm going to go to this trial." The University of Illinois is hosting it. I was dead last. I almost got lapped in the 1,500. Wheelchair racing is, as in most sports, there's so much more than just being strong. Knowing how to race and what to do, I had none of that experience because here I was, this athlete with a disability, racing against runners all the time. I had zero competitive experience, what we call tactical experience, So, that was a tough moment.

My whole family was there, my grandparents. I think they had 20 aunts and uncles and I almost got lapped. They were 20 yards behind me, and it was very sobering. I remember Marty Morris came over and he goes, "Pretty hard race huh?" And, I go, "Yeah." You try not to cry or lose it.

Abrahamson: Yeah but that's day one, Scot.

Hollonbeck: I know, I know, but you have to make a decision. I used to follow Mark Spitz all the time, and I'd heard his story about how he'd made this decision to just break his goal down, not into this amorphous, "I want to win a medal," but I've got to shave off whatever that amount of time frame is. So, in my case I had to shave off almost a minute. And, I said, "You know if there's no way I can do this. You know it doesn't matter how hard I try in any given workout. But, if I use that approach of breaking it down I realized that per month it was like 1.2 seconds a month over that next four years, per workout." It ended up being a half of one second. I was like, "OK, I can do that right." Sure enough I went from dead last in the trial – a then four years later we had the trial in New Orleans. It was in conjunction with USA Track and Field's Olympic trials – the Dan and Dave years – and I won it. That's the international trial because you had to win the U.S. and you had to beat whoever made it internationally as well.

So, it was a wonderful experience. I didn't train any harder. I couldn't bench press one pound more, but I had that tactical experience. I had a coach that specialized in wheelchair racing and I had athletes and peers that were racing wheelchairs and it just really exploded. I finally started. I got international competition. It was a big eye opener. So, what is training like? it's a full-time job, a full- time job and then you also have to be constantly getting the quality competition is critical.

Abrahamson: So, you make the team in '92. You go to Barcelona. Talk about that.

Hollonbeck: That was awesome. We went down to the sendoff for the Olympic team and things were a little weird still at that point. First of all, my hometown Rochelle, Illinois, had a big parade. All the local papers – Rockford, Rochelle, Chicago, they did stories because there weren't that many people going to the Olympic Games. It's wonderful. It's everything you always dreamed being on a team would be like and getting to represent your country. It was a really wonderful experience. A local man raised some money. People just donated like $1 or $5, and they raised like –

I think it was just under $13,000, which was amazing to have for equipment. I used that for actually four more years to go to competitions. And sponsors, I ended being – started getting sponsors like Champion Sportswear and Visa. I finally had access to really great wheelchairs and racing chairs. So, it was wonderful. Then boom! They're like, "Can you come and speak at this school, or this graduation?" What you realize is all these things start hitting you, and that was a part I wasn't prepared for because you got to balance all that, which is a big piece of the puzzle as well. But the Games are so intense. It's very difficult to describe.

Everything happens all in a very short timeframe while you're trying to peak. We went to Tampa for the sendoff. Got all our gear and then they realized we've got a problem. There were two men, myself and Mike Noe – Marty Morris, who was the coach, and there were two women, Jean Driscoll and Candace Cable I believe, oh three, and Deanna Sodoma. They pulled us into a room and they said, "We don't have enough room in the Village, and we're going to send you guys home. You're going to come over the day before your event." I thought, "There is no way I'm getting on a plane and going back to Chicago and back to Rochelle." There was a Games rep, Greg Harney, who was had to give us that exciting news.

Started making some phone calls and this is where we ended up talking to the folks at Visa, who had a friends and family program that year. And, I just called everybody, trying to find rooms at the Olympics, which is tricky a couple weeks before they start, and we did. We found Visa stepped up and said, "We'll give you some rooms." That put the USOC in a very awkward position, a lot of negotiating. Ultimately our coach didn't go because they didn't have that many rooms and then in the 12th hour the USOC sent us to France – which was where they had the track team as like a pre-training camp, which was super cool. I got to meet all my heroes that I'd been watching for years and that was really fun. We had briefly met a couple of them at the U.S. Track and Field Trials, and then I remember flying over sitting next to Gail Devers, who was a sprinter for many Games. Wonderful woman from Atlanta. It was pretty cool. They didn't allow us, the U.S. athletes, to march. We did end up getting to move into the village.

Wilson: When you say U.S. athletes, you mean the Para-athletes?

Hollonbeck: Yeah, the athletes that were racing in the wheelchair events.

Abrahamson: What was their theory for not allowing you to march?

Hollonbeck: We weren't athletes by the definition of an athlete. In order to be defined as an athlete you had to be an Olympian. Because we were in an exhibition event, we were not Olympians. Here was what made that very awkward for them years later. In previous Games they did allow exhibition athletes to march, just not the exhibition athletes with disabilities.

Abrahamson: Do you know for instance, if Herb Perez marched in those Games?

Hollonbeck: I'm assuming yes, but I do not know.

Abrahamson: Was there an exhibition in taekwondo that year?

Hollonbeck: That would be a great question for Herb.

Abrahamson: Because he won the gold medal in Barcelona.

Hollonbeck: Well, he won an exhibition gold medal, but that's a great question. Years later, Herb and I were on the Athletes Advisory Committee together and I think I brought that issue up. He didn't say anything in the meeting, but he might not have wanted to. It's hard to say. We'll have to ask Herb. I don't know. There were other athletes. We did figure that out later.

Abrahamson: The 1,500 on the track is what, day three? Day four?

Hollonbeck: It was awesome. You go into the village and I can just remember going into the cafeteria and you're like, "Alright, don't do anything stupid. Don't drop your tray." You've got to go up and here's some gymnasts that are as tall as me, and then over here there's the basketball team from Lithuania and they're like 7 feet 4. You just kind of going around and it sort of reminded me of "Star Wars" when they're in that bar and you're trying to figure out, "What planet are these athletes from and what sport do they do?" It was great. Met, so many wonderful volunteers and just the energy around the Games is a beautiful expression of some very good parts of the human experience.

I was just in heaven. Don't tell anyone, but my twin brother was there. So, I would give him my credentials and he would sneak in and then he would take in all of the Chicago Bulls stuff because the Bulls had won. He was swapping Chicago Bulls gear for Olympic gear. So, you know, the whole Olympic experience, it was beautiful on so many levels.

The day of the competition, our coach was pretty strict, so we didn't go to any other events. He'd want us to do very few media and other activities to just try to focus right. I didn't know to meditate back then. I did a little bit of visualization, but I had no idea what it was going to be like when you show up for your first final.

Abrahamson: So, you were 22?

Hollonbeck: Yeah, I was 23 I believe. It was a day, a moment, a time I'll never forget. We went under the stadium and it was packed that day almost 100 percent – not quite – but almost. We're underneath the stadium and you're doing that little 60-meter track and the crowd is roaring. When they would roar, the dust would drop. It was like out of the movie "Gladiator," where they're getting ready to come out and they have this door with the screen on it so you can't really see. You come out from this

tunnel and they pull that back and the light's kind of blinding and you roll out. Then there's the stadium and they're cheering for the last discus throw and the high jump. I's just shaking you physically, you're moving, certainly underneath, then when you get outside you feel it.

Myself and Jeff Adams I think were the youngest guys there. And Mike I guess would have been – Noe – the other American. Your heart starts picking up. You know, at this point I've trained for eight years, I have trained, and as a kid I trained. You think you're ready. You're not. I went out – wheelchair racing like mobile chess. You have to make some decisions. Then you have to have your backup options. It's very tactical. Getting boxed is not like getting boxed as a runner. It's 6- feet per chair. You got to get around the wheels, you can't just jump laterally. I ended up being fifth, learned a lot in that race. It was an amazing, amazing day and I loved it. I didn't medal, which is fine, but to have worked for that many years and finally gotten there was a real honor. There were just so many other great athletes who worked just as hard that just, you know, they missed it by a hair here, a hair there. It was a fabulous experience.

Abrahamson: Do you remember to this day how many hundredths of a second you were out of a medal?

Hollonbeck: I was actually I think a second out of the medal. I blew up a little early on that. I didn't have enough gas in the tank. I went out front a little too long. It was a good learning experience. I think it was actually less than a second, but I was I was out by – I believe it was three chair lengths, which is a pretty good distance.

Abrahamson: But, Scot, this is a pattern. At 17, you were last. At 23, you were just out of the medals. Now, at 26 or 27, here we have a medal from Atlanta.

Hollonbeck: I was super fortunate that the Paralympics where a month later. We went back to the drawing table.

Wilson: Did you physically go back to the States?

Hollonbeck: I did, but I came early again. Yes, I did. After that, I did not do that again. It was way too much wear and tear and travel. But, that first Games I went back home, turned around and did it again. From a Games prep standpoint, I saw how amazing the USOC is because at that point the USOC did not organize our Games prep. So, we had some serious challenges, starting with they couldn't get the plane to take off. They had to take a bunch of the sports equipment off and we had to fly through Iceland. We got there. It was like the USOC in the '60s or the '70s. I knew you just had to be tranquilo. It was hilarious. No flight had ever seen that many people with disabilities trying to get on a single flight. They had like two aisle chairs for close to 160 people in wheelchairs. The judo guys, who were blind, that's who carried me on. I think they made – one judo guy said he carried 32 – well, I get to call them gimps – on the plane – or crips. So he said, "What are you?

Are you a quad are you a para?" I'm like, "I'm a para." "Oh so you're a little lighter." I'm like, "I'm not spastic." "Is that why that guy was kicking me in the chest?" I'm like, "Yeah."

It was awesome, right, and what I got to see there was so many different people, with different disabilities that I had not been exposed to. It was a beautiful experience for me as a young person with a disability to start to be around that many other people with disabilities and that broad range of disabilities and getting to watch and see how, and hear their stories, was really I think just a beautiful, beautiful part of being on those teams.

We had some trials and tribulations, but I've learned my lesson. I sent two racing chairs that were identical separately because I figured it was going to be mayhem and that's where you have to start early on getting that international experience.

I'd gone to the world champs. And, they had smashed my wheel. One of my racing chair wheels, got pretty hammered. That was the IAAF world champs. And, so you start figuring this stuff out. As it happens, one of my competitors never got his chair. He raced in my backup racing chair. Cisco Jeter, and it fit him really well. I think he was happy. So, we had a blast. The Paralympics were unbelievable again. Same thing, to see how beautiful and seamless those Games were in Barcelona really opened my eyes up to how well it worked actually that the host city would get to get a two for one on their investment in these venues and housing and staff and et cetera. It was really great. Going in and I thought, "Oh, there's no way the Paralympics will be able to compare to the Olympics," and coming out I'm like I wouldn't – if you've said, "You have to pick one," I would have been very hard pressed.

Wilson: We're a little pressed for time. With the '92 Olympic and Paralympic Games you began to change your own attitude regarding which was the preferred Games for you as a competitor. So, you competed in three more Paralympic Games. Could you talk about which of those was the most meaningful or memorable for you?

Hollonbeck: Sure, the '96 Games. I ended up moving to Atlanta and getting a – I lucked into a job with Coca-Cola's worldwide Olympics sports marketing department. I didn't have a sports marketing degree, but after '92 we got international requests to help do development work in Ecuador and Peru. We had been running fundraisers to raise money for our collegiate and international travel prior to that. So, I ended up going to Ecuador and did a program with the United Nations. So, when I went and applied for this job even though I didn't have the degree, they're like – I'd been doing it. So, I just gave him all the grant work and I got the job. That was awesome.

So, to be in your home country, living in that city is totally the way to do it. It was amazing to – I ended up winning a medal there. So, I would say for me '96 was a big Games. In the U.S. that was the first time the U.S. had hosted the Games.

And, they did a beautiful job. There were some challenges for sure and there wasn't integration with the host organizing. There were two separate host organizing committees. And, just put that in perspective, like all the keys for the village were mysteriously lost by the Atlanta Olympic Committee. And, all the cabling was cut in the Olympic Stadium for the audio and visual. So, there was no link, but they got through it all. It all worked out and it was there was a great Games. Both of them were amazing Games for me as an athlete and I think for the city and for the athletes in general.

After that it got very political for me because I knew that as an athlete I could just train and focus on the training. But, there were constantly requests to do athlete representation issues and I had been in the very privileged position from a career standpoint and from a historical standpoint with the advocacy work. So, I started doing more and more advocacy work, which wasn't quite as pure as those early Games. Organizing an athlete boycott when you go to the Games puts you in a different position.

And, then in 2004 I decided I wouldn't do a lot of that. We had already filed the federal lawsuit. We had raised money with new sponsors and that got held up and so we finally, in 2003, filed – had to come back out of retirement. You have to make a national team, by the way, to file against the USOC. We'd gone back I must say in '97 and '98 and worked on revising the Amateur Sports Act to include Paralympians. We tried to do everything, and for eight years really hard work, and finally just said, "OK that's it. We're filing." Three athletes filed in in 2003. Then that was it. I wasn't going to advocate anymore. I mean, we were working on the lawsuit, but I could focus on 2004. Unfortunately, I tore my rotator cuff going into those Games.

Wilson: Can you talk about – talk more about the lawsuit for the benefit of people who aren't familiar with it?

Hollonbeck: Sure. So, I think the setup for the lawsuit is that we got the law changed.

Wilson: When you say, "the law," you mean the Amateur Sports Act?

Hollonbeck: The Amateur Sports Act. Everywhere said it said Olympian it said Paralympian because for a long time the USOC would say, "Well, you guys aren't athletes as defined by the law," or what they perceived to be the law. And, then when they took that back to Congress, they're like, "Oh, no. We really think this should include Paralympians." So, that was changed and then we started having these working committees with the senior staff. And, there was a guy, Mark Shepherd, at the USOC, at that point, that was working for the USOC. He really was instrumental in recruiting me to do my duty as a Paralympic athlete and run for this position so. I ended up – they had the AAC as defined by the Amateur Sports Act, which was to have athletes from each of the medal Olympic sports.

Wilson: When you say AAC you mean the Athletes Advisory Council?

Hollonbeck: Athletes Advisory Council, yup. And, then there was one athlete rep. The two before me had quit in frustration. I got in there. It was pretty frustrating. Then they said, "OK, we'll add one more." So, they added one winter athlete. Sarah Will was that winter athlete. She's a skier. She's a physician, wonderful woman. It was pretty tough still. We were given voice with no vote. We were still the other. They had so many other issues and our issue was again like the last thing, right. So, that was pretty frustrating. But, we stayed at it.

It became clear to me that the biggest challenge we had internally with the other athletes was they felt like that there was only so much. The pie was only so big and that if they started dividing it up with the Paralympians, that was a non-starter. We worked on getting the Paralympic branding rights out into the marketplace. There were these discussions going on. There were multiple issues both at the funding level, at the media rights level. A lot of different things that had to occur. But, it all came back to money.

We started pushing a little bit more and I knew what would happen if I pushed. You're not going to be the golden child. There will be consequences. And, I had done – I had gotten to do a lot of things for the Games and for the USOC, or whoever asked, I would do it going into '95, '96. I knew if I pushed, all that was going to start to phase out, which was fine. But, it does hurt you when you stop to raise money and to compete and do those types of things.

I ended up having to run for that Athlete Advisory seat three times. They decided there needed to be two voting – what would be the best term here – recounts. I think they were hoping someone else would get elected and then they started a thing called the Paralympic Athletes Advisory Council because they realized two athletes wasn't going to be enough. So, I got nominated as the chair for that twice and I don't think the USOC was super excited. We got a lot done and then they just fully disbanded us. And, this was a very difficult time for the USOC. There was a lot of other issues going on at the time. There was a lot of corruption or I guess you would describe it as that. And, Congress stepped in again. It was very tumultuous time for the USOC.

And, finally in 2003 – backup 2001. I said, "OK here's the deal. What if we could bring you 80 million new dollars?" That got some eyes to turn.

They said, "What are you thinking?" And, because I had been lucky enough to meet a lot of folks from different marketing agencies and the rights holders to the Olympic Games, who all happen to be in Atlanta, Meridian, we'd had a lot of conversations with some folks and knew we could do this. And, then some of the folks I had worked with at Coca-Cola went on to work for Kodak and Pepsi. So, it's a very small world out there. When you can pick the phone up and make a few phone calls I knew we could get some new sponsors to the table. We said, "Let's

put the bids, let's put the rights out and let's put it out to bid and see who shows up." A

And, the USOC liked that. They said, "That's fine, but you have to stop competing. And, you've got to resign from the AAC." I said, "Fine because it's about you to bring new money." So, I did those things. We then went – well then we went through four CEOs and it just still kept getting tabled.

Meanwhile, Pepsi off the record had committed to $60 million. Well, the existing sponsors got first right of refusal. When they caught wind that there was somebody going to step in they put the brakes on. That was pretty frustrating.

So, after two years of not being able to bring that $60 million in and knowing what that meant, then that's when I finally said, "OK. Last option, last card to play here is we're going to file suit." So, pulled the gloves out. I'd been staying super fit and doing some marathons and that sort of thing, but it was back to 100 percent. So, I went back and trained and then we filed. And, we had 17 – I believe it was 17 – counts of discrimination issues we wanted to resolve.

The day after we filed, the USOC took the Paralympic budget from I believe was $6.3 million quadrennial Winter and Summer Games budget to $24 million. Within three years they had addressed 16 of those issues, which related to drug testing, coaches, support, uniforms, international travel, Games prep, all the usual stuff. So, you know, in the big picture, yeah, it was $24 million, but – we also brought in I might add – we ended up – did bring in The Hartford immediately as a sponsor. And some sponsors had come on – Home Depot, who I ended up going and working for them for a while as well them being in Atlanta. They had earmarked their money.

Like we learned the game and the game was get the sponsor to tell the USOC what you want done. And, that started what's slowly happening. You know, change takes time. If you told me in 1988 it was going to take 30 years, I'd have been like, "Pffft." Now, if I could talk to my younger self, or somebody who's advocating for change, like, "These things take time. Like think decades." That's how long it can take and it feels frustrating, but now looking back, you know, we've gotten there and the USOC has stepped up in so many ways. And, the movement in general, really exciting to see that.

Abrahamson: That leads into the very last and obvious last question. Things do take time. So, we are now at the outset of 2019, or a year and a half since Los Angeles was awarded the 2028 Olympic Games. And, instead of it being 11 and 10 and now it's already nine plus years to go. You said, we've gotten there. I mean, I think we're sort of there there I guess. So, where do you think that there is and where, by the time we get to 2028, do you hope the "there" is?

Hollonbeck: So, OK. First I want to say for me the Olympics and the Paralympics and pursuing

24 things like medals is – when we talk about where is "there," to this day it's a platform to share human stories. It's not about winning medals. It's about every human being that's out there understanding we're all unique. We all have stories. We all have goals. We all can – we're always working on those goals. Not everyone is going to go to a Paralympic or an Olympic Games, or a state championship. But, it's just it's about wellness – mentally, emotionally, physically.

All the things it takes to be a great athlete is what it takes to be a happy human being. So, I think for me when I think about there, we have a long way to go still. We still need a national push to get our state high school athletic associations to be inclusive in our school systems. Here's why. You can never buy all those school buses. You don't even know where the kids with disabilities are. We've already got them at a school. We've already believe as a society that part of – it's important to have these extracurricular activities and there's data to prove it's no different than Title IX, or any subset of our population. If you can let children try and fail and succeed and all of it, it's profound for them because we're all coming from different backgrounds in our homes and our environments.

So, for me the "there" is when certainly children can have their dream at whatever level that dream is and they have enough opportunity to pursue that at some level. And, then that goes all the way up the pyramid to the top, which is those of us who were able to go to the Games, right. But, it's a reflection. We should be doing all of this so that all beings are well. I know that it sounds like really out there. That's I think what "there" is. I do believe that the movements, the Paralympians of today are getting there. They're really much closer. We've made so much progress, right. We still have some more progress to make for sure. I think that progress comes not at the top. It needs to be programmatically in providing access to the arguably one in every 10 children in this country that has some kind of a physical or mental disability that isn't getting served. The top is never going to fully serve them.

It's just that something – that's not what it's designed to do. It's in this area. So, for me one personal goal, we've worked a lot over the years on state level advocacy showing legislators and governors that if you will add another $10,000 to a school district's budget and allow all the students in that school district to come in and there's a coach there, with some gym time that can play a couple of games, that you will have a swing of 67 percent unemployment working-age working-abled people that are more likely to commit suicide and be hooked on substances, or – which by the way the state's going to pay for, right, through a variety of social programs. In Georgia they track the kids that went through their state high school athletic association in the school districts participated. It's triple the number that go on to college if they've had a jersey on their body and been accountable to a coach and then shown up. There's some really profound data that I hope we can continue to share that shows how easy it is actually to have our version of Title IX in our local school systems and then also in our colleges –

I no longer go to inclusion roundtables. I'm tired of being the – going in with groups

that don't want to make change. The NCAA needs to get off their bum and change their rules. They apply the same rules to us that they would to males and females about how they start programs and they require 30 of their member organizations. Well, we're never going to hit those numbers because we have a much smaller subset. And, so they've got to modify that and encourage their membership to find ways to be inclusive in a meaningful way. It's not that expensive. It's a shift, right. And, so it's moving us up off that conversation of being the last thing that gets discussed at any organization up.

So, I hope – not hope. It's going to happen. It already is happening. It's happening and we just we need a couple dozen more Tatyanas and Debbie McFaddens and they're around. I mean, we're already currently at 11 states that now have programs, I think it is. Might be 13 at some level. But, there's still a lot of unserved kids – a lot and there's a lot of them who would benefit tremendously. There's a lot of states and communities that are paying for those people to not have those experiences because that's what it boils down to. I mean, they're less likely to get an education. They're less likely to work. They're less likely to pay tax. And, they become more, you know, something that the community has to pick up. And, worse yet it's wasted potential. There're so many beautiful gifts that we aren't experiencing because of that. So, that's the where where. Hopefully it'll lead to more battles for somebody, but the where yeah the where is – that's what it is for me.

Wilson: Thank you so much.