Margie McDonald | September 08, 2008 12:00am.THERE will be extra motivation behind the 90kg frame of Australia's sole judo representative Anthony Clarke, when he takes to the mats tomorrow.
The 47-year-old, who is totally blind, is a five-time national champion for his weight division, claiming those titles against able-bodied competitors.
So, after competing at four Paralympic Games (Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney and Athens), Clarke thought he might have a crack at the Olympics this time.
Two athletes made the cross-over last month - South Africa's leg amputee Natalie du Toit (swimming) and Poland's arm amputee Natalia Partyka (table tennis) - by competing in the Olympics and returning for the Paralympics.
But officialdom and ignorance that even a court battle could not subdue stopped Clarke in his tracks. And that is a hard thing to do, considering Clarke is a Paralympic gold medallist from 1996.
"I'm very big on civil rights," said the Adelaide resident, who makes a living from motivational speaking. He lost his sight in a car accident when he was 17.
"I was banned from competing in Olympic qualifying tournaments by the Oceania Judo Union based on just being blind. It was only two years ago, I entered in the OJU World Cup there with a view to try to qualify for the Olympics in Beijing and the selectors knew who I was and withdrew me on the basis that I was blind.
"That destroyed my confidence in judo as an equal opportunity sport, because I'd been competing with able-bods internationally and medalling overseas for 15 years, competing in higher category tournaments than the one they banned me from.
"And the only excuse they could come up with was that players and referees might treat me differently. That's no argument saying, 'oh, this could happen'. We had a two-year court battle, but I ended up settling out of court because it was emotionally unsettling."
The court action ended in June last year, but Clarke is still hurting. The door was left open with the OJU to have further discussions on the issue and Clarke wants to follow that up when he returns to Australia.
"I've won five national titles against able-bodied (athletes). They were saying things like I couldn't grip fight against sighted people, I can't defend against certain techniques. And I had video evidence as plain as you want, staring you in the face.
"But discrimination works in funny ways and ignorance is bliss and it was clear no weight of evidence was going to shift their attitude. I was going to retire after that, because basically it was like being patronised for 20 years. You know, 'yes, you can do judo, blah, blah, but don't get too good'."
In his work as a motivational speaker - Clarke also coaches judo - he promoted the sport as equal opportunity.
"I still really haven't gotten over it because my whole career has been shafted because of one stroke of a pen," he said.
"A gold medal here, at least I can shove it up them. But that's not my motivation for coming here.
"My motivation is, it's my last one (Paralympics) and I'm going to give it all I've got and I'll be able to finish, medal or no medal, knowing I couldn't have done any better. Then I can move on to other areas of my life."
Upon reflection, Clarke feels he should have alerted the media to his squabble with the OJU.
"I've kept it very low key. I had bad legal advice, when really I should have gone straight to the media with it."
Even if he returned and scored a win with OJU by allowing blind athletes to compete in Olympic qualifying selection bouts, it would not make him push on for London in 2012.
"No, it's too late for me. One of the reasons why I hurt so much is - in theory I'm too old anyway, but I'm still winning so I'm one of those one-off people who managed to get through a bit later - I knew this was my last chance at an able-bod tournament," he said.
"There wouldn't be a second chance because I'll be 51 or something at the next one. The chances of me getting hurt would be pretty high. So it was my last chance, so that's probably what hurts the most."
Being Australia's only representative in the sport here, he trains with the Canadian team - which is Bill Morgan.
"Physically I'm fine, I'm as fit as I'm going to be, and I've definitely got the skill level there. Really it just comes down to, if I'm firing on the day, there's no reason why I can't medal, if not win it," Clarke said.
"It's a pretty tight tournament, there's not much between any of us. Probably out of the 12, 10 of us could take it out, so it's going to be a very hard tournament."
Clarke reached the quarter-finals in Athens.
[from: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/beijing_olympics/story/0,27313,24309037-5014197,00.html]
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