La nuit ensoleillée

For two weeks in 1980, two thousand disabled athletes gathered in Arnhem, Holland, for the sixth edition of the Olympic Games for the Physically Disabled, which had been held for twenty years and had last been organized in the Soviet Union. To begin with, one-legged Canadian Arnie Boldt cleared 1.96 meters in the high jump. Records were soon to fall like the cold rain of that uncertain summer, and for all those who dreamed of going faster, higher and stronger, there was no shortage of adversaries. Brad Parks, the wheeled American, pulverized the 100 and 1,500-meter records, Leone Williams, the Jamaican, threw the discus over 28 meters; among the "big guns", the battle was fierce between Brown, the American world record holder at 263 kilos, and Lindberg, the elf from the North.