There Chris McElroy stood at the Opening Ceremony of the Special Olympics World Games, shaking hands with his swimming idol, Michael Phelps.
The 27-year-old Aurora resident couldn’t believe he stood next to the most decorated Olympian in United States history with 22 medals, but he used the inspiration to win a gold medal of his own a few days later.
McElroy — who also loves Colorado’s local Olympic swimming star Missy Franklin, a graduate of Aurora’s Regis Jesuit High School — won his division of the 100 meter freestyle on July 27 at the Uytengsu Aquatics Center in Los Angeles. The memory of meeting Phelps stands out just as strong.
“I’d never seen him in person until that day, so it was very nice to have that handshake with him,” McElroy said of Phelps, who also appeared at a swimming clinic a few days later.
“It was good to have a handshake with a professional swimmer right there,” McElroy said.
McElroy, who attended Gateway High School for three years, but graduated from Smoky Hill in 2006 and still lives nearby, made up part of the four-athlete Colorado contingent at the Special Olympics World Games, which featured 6,500 athletes with intellectual disabilities from around the world.
Colorado’s small, but successful group also included tennis players Julian Hall of Denver and Nathan Knepper of Golden and powerlifter Nikia Davenport. The four combined to win five medals and five ribbons over the course of the competition between July 25 and Aug. 2.
Though he’s competed in basketball, bowling, flag football and golf — which he also participated in during Special Olympics Colorado’s Summer Classic on Aug. 8 at Aurora’s Fitzsimons Golf Course — over the past 15 years in Special Olympics, swimming is by far McElroy’s favorite sport.
When the family moved to Colorado from Spain, his mother, Lourdes, discovered Special Olympics and swimming was one of the first things he got into.
Lourdes got her son into the water and taught him the basics of swimming, but he really took off in the last nine months under the tutelage of Maureen “Moe” McGarity, who is based out of the Colorado Athletic Club in Greenwood Village.
McGarity has worked with another Special Olympic swimmer, Ryan Stratton, for 20 years and relished the chance to put her masters degree in adaptive physical education to work with McElroy.
“He’s come miles; he’s probably dropped about 45 seconds in his 100 freestyle,” McGarity said. “He could not do a flip turn and his freestyle was pretty messy, but he was a nice kid and I saw him learn pretty quickly right off the bat.”
McGarity taught McElroy all four strokes, adding the butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke to his knowledge of the freestyle.
The backstroke is what helped McElroy get to the World Games in the first place, as he won a gold medal in the stroke at the Special Olympics Colorado Summer Games June in Grand Junction.
That gold medal put him into the lottery for a spot on the World Games team, along with all the other gold medalists from Colorado.
When his name drawn at random, they family scuttled a potential trip to Spain in order to go to Los Angeles.
Once they got there, it was a spectacle to behold, as the event is the largest athletic event in Los Angeles since the Summer Olympics in 1984 according to the Special Olympics website.
Overall, it was an eye-opening experience for Lourdes, who enjoyed seeing the spectators, coaches and athletes from all over the world.
“It was very amazing, there were countries there I didn’t even know existed,” she said.
“There was a runner from Mongolia who didn’t have anywhere to train and there were people swimming from some South American countries that barely have water. It was amazing what some of these kids can do when they have nothing really. I feel very luck to have everything I have here.”
From the start of the competition, people could see that McElroy had been working with a coach. Several people remarked to Lourdes that he had the look of somebody who had extra training, which he showed in his performance in the pool.
McElroy won his first gold medal when he touched the wall in 1 minute, 39.39 seconds, to finish ahead of a group that included swimmers from the Cayman Islands, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Bahrain, Singapore and France. McElroy and his fellow competitors were classified together based on the times they recorded in prelims a day earlier.
In prelims, McElroy swam a time of 1:42.81 and bettered that by nearly four seconds to win thegold medal, which came as even a surprise to him.
“I didn’t know I was going to get a gold medal at first,” McElroy said. “I didn’t know I was winning until I got up to the podium and the awards area. Next thing you know, I got a gold medal around my neck. I was shocked. All my family, my girlfriend and my grandparents from Spain were crying too over the phone when I was talking to them.”
McElroy also swam in the 50 meter freestyle (in which he finished fourth) and as part of a 4×50 meter relay team, though neither of those swims yielded additional medals.
He plans to get more in the future though, which McGarity believes is very possible.
“I look forward to the next few years, he has some great things to come,” McGarity said.
Special Olympics are open from 2 years old to as old as athletes want to continue to compete. McElroy hopes to see himself continuing to compete in 40 or 50 years.
“I’m just going to keep going and going until I call it quits,” McElroy said. “Hopefully that will be never.”
Courtney Oakes is Sports Editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at 303-750-7555 or sports@aurorasentinel.com. Twitter: @aurorasports. FB: Aurora Prep Sentinel
