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ING NEW YORK CITY MARATHONOctober 29, 2008Yannick BenjaminSheila KellyNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK MARY WITTENBERG: Yannick, if you would just share a few words, how you're feeling about Sunday, what are you looking forward to most. YANNICK BENJAMIN: Well, thank you for having me, and first off, I want to thank Avis for this wonderful award. I want to thank Achilles, as well, for letting me participate and join their group, as well. Roadrunners Club, too, for organizing this, and most of all for the people of New York who have been always so kind to me. That's really important, and I can't say how proud I am to be participating in this race. Doing all five boroughs, being that I was born and raised here, that's quite great, and I'm really excited. Nervous for sure, anticipating this race to come and wake up early in the morning. Just the other day I was training, and my left wheel just popped out right in the middle of 125th Street. I had no left wheel (laughter). And I was really nervous and sort of my levels of anxiety just skyrocketed. Yesterday morning I had to drive out to Long Island to get it fixed, so that worked out all right. So of course crossing my fingers for no mechanical deficiencies of any flat tires or anything, and I'm certainly aware of the challenge it's going to be. I'm doing it on my actual wheelchair that I do every day, so I'm looking forward to the challenge because that's what life is all about. Certainly being in the situation that I am in now was presented as a challenge exactly five years ago. It happened on October 27th, so it's pretty interesting that it's going to happen in five days; if I cross that line it will be quite rewarding. The other day I was training, and I was -- I go from Yankee Stadium, across Harlem, into the West Side Highway. There's a bike trail, and then I end up going to -- I do an internship at a wine store all the way down on Washington Street, so I do that twice a week. It occurred to me, I hit 96th Street, and I never thought about it, and I said, oh, my gosh, it happened to be on the day of my accident, which was on Sunday, which was October 26th. It sort of happened at midnight. But Sunday, October 26/27. Oh, my gosh, it happened on 96th Street on the West Side Highway. I kind of thought about it, and I said look at where I've come from. I'm ready, I'm training for the marathon. I would never have envisioned this. I was in the hospital; they told me I was paralyzed. I said, what am I going to do now? What can I do? But with great resources and great organizations that we have here in New York, I'm able to do that, and I really want to thank everyone that participates in it, takes their time to do it, because you're helping me, and when you're helping me I'm going to be able to help others, and it's kind of a chain effect. Thank you. (Applause.) MARY WITTENBERG: We are honored to have you in New York. Sheila, we have a big crew from Michael J. Fox, really important message to share with others. How many people on the team this year, and how are things going for the group? SHEILA KELLY: We have 130 runners under Team Fox this year for the New York City Marathon and we are just absolutely thrilled, and everyone has been out running and racing and fundraising, so we're really looking forward to Sunday. MARY WITTENBERG: Yannick, we wish you well. Sheila, to the whole team, we wish all of them well, and you'll get to spend time here, but enjoy the 26.2 miles. It'll be tough, but we hope it'll be the experience of a lifetime for you. SHEILA KELLY: Alyssa Johnson, since she can't be here, asked we say a couple of words on her behalf, so I wanted to make sure that I did that for her. I asked her what she would say if she were sitting here herself, and she said she does not feel like a hero or inspirational, although people do tell her that she is. She's just doing what she thinks is her obvious course of action, which is trying to live her life with Parkinson's disease as normally as possible. She's run two marathons. This will be her third since diagnosis, and her goal this year is to beat Katie Holmes' time from last year, which we all know she will. Why she continues to run marathons even though they take her so long, even if they are closing down the course behind her, she knows that she's raising awareness for Parkinson's disease and a few more dollars for research and then it's all worth it, and she wanted to thank the New York Road Runners and Avis so very much for this award. MARY WITTENBERG: Thank you so much. As we wrap up here on this portion of the morning, we especially want to thank Avis. In addition to their commitment, they'll have 200-some employees of their Cherry Hill location as we welcome the athletes with disabilities to the finish line, so thank you, and we thank the Achilles Track Club, our partner in helping athletes with disabilities get to the starting line as well as the finish line. Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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