Chris Nikic, the first person with Down syndrome to complete an IRONMAN<\/a>, and Caleb Prewitt, an adaptive athlete competing this weekend in the DTO Challenge.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s about raising the bar,\u201d Nikic said. \u201cWe\u2019re able to be independent overall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other adaptive athletes at the expo say the addition of the division is a meaningful acknowledgment of their place within the running community.<\/p>\n
[WATCH PREVIOUS COVERAGE WITH CHRIS NIKIC]<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means the world to me, honestly,\u201d Noah Billings said. \u201cJust to have this huge community of many different races with many different mental and physical disabilities\u2026 it just means there\u2019s a community for me out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow athlete Frank Russell said he\u2019s been training hard to be part of the growing field of runners. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been running every day, about a 10K,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Organizers say this weekend\u2019s race is as much about celebrating the sport\u2019s progress as it is about competition. The hope is that the new division will open doors for more athletes to participate for years to come.<\/p>\n
Track Shack expects to see more adaptive athletes than ever at Saturday\u2019s event, with thousands of runners set to line up early in downtown Orlando.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Thousands of athletes are lacing up for Saturday\u2019s OUC Orlando Half Marathon, but race organizers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,141,140,6337,14095],"class_list":["post-72949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-ouc","tag-ouc-half-marathon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}