It’s Sunday afternoon, and you’re just finding your seat at the Edward Jones Dome, ready to watch the St. Louis Rams open the season against the Minnesota Vikings. You bemoan quarterback Sam Bradford’s fragile knees as you call for the nearest beer guy. Out on the field, a man runs from end to end carrying a team flag, pumping up the crowd. It’s the sort of pregame promotion, like a ceremonial first pitch, that many fans might ignore.
But this time, you should pay close attention, because the guy out there with the flag will be Paralympic sprinter Blake Leeper.
Because of a birth defect, Leeper’s legs didn’t develop below the knees. His parents were told that he would never walk, but they wanted more for their son. He was fitted for prosthetics when he was 9 months old and could walk by his first birthday, about the time many kids take their first steps.
“This is something that I had to deal with at an early age, knowing that life isn’t fair,” Leeper says. “We’re all different individuals, and we all face challenges. It’s all about how you overcome those challenges.”
In high school, he played basketball and baseball, though his prosthetics made both sports a struggle. One of his legs occasionally would come off while he was running down the court, and he’d have to crawl to put it back on. He was never the fastest, couldn’t jump the highest. When it came time to pick teams at recess, nobody wanted to choose the kid with no legs. But Blake found that just by playing, he earned the respect of his peers and his community.
“That’s why I truly love sports,” he says, “that level of respect when it comes to competition.”
In college, Leeper became interested in running after seeing someone using prosthetic running blades on TV. With a grant from the Challenged Athletes Foundation, Leeper received what he calls his “running legs” in 2010. He had never run before. Two years later, he won two medals at the Paralympics in London, earning silver in the 400 meters and bronze in the 200 meters.
His greatest accomplishment, though, came in a team sport. At the 2012 games, he ran the anchor leg for the USA’s 4x100 relay. The team members finished third, took a victory lap, and then found out they wouldn’t be receiving bronze medals. A runner had stepped over a lane line, and the team had been disqualified. “We could have practiced more. We could have been a little more dedicated,” Leeper says. “That feeling of being disqualified didn’t sit very well with us. So that next year, we trained harder.”
That work paid off. At the World Championships in 2013, the team won gold while setting a world record.
The perpetually upbeat Leeper credits his parents for his success. “The only reason I was able to do that was because of my parents, the mindset that they instilled in me at an early age, always keeping a positive attitude, never letting your physical appearance determine who you are as a person,” he says. “They set a high standard for me.”
Leeper draws inspiration from Oscar Pistorius, the South African blade runner who competed against able-bodied runners in the 2012 Olympics. Leeper says that despite Pistorius’ current legal predicament—a verdict in his murder trial is expected soon—he still proved to the world what a person with a disability can do.
Now, Leeper has his sights set on 2016. “My main goal is to be that first disabled double-leg amputee as an American to qualify and compete for not only the Paralympic games but the Olympic able-bodied games as well,” he says.
But first, this weekend, he’s coming to St. Louis. Leeper grew up in Tennessee, cheering for the Titans and then-coach Jeff Fisher. At the ESPY Awards, he met Fisher, now the coach of the Rams, who was so impressed with Leeper’s story, he invited the runner to a game.
Leeper hopes that his visit to St. Louis will inspire others. “The doctors said I would never walk a day in my life. Here I am, running,” he says. “I’m trying to be the fastest man in the world. That’s just a testament that anything is possible.”
