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The 27-year-old Frasure is the United States' top threat to win gold
at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics. He runs the 100 meters in 11.02
seconds -- less than one second slower than superstar Marion Jones
(who, incidentally, is also his Olympic training partner).
In 1992, when Frasure was a 19-year-old sophomore on the North
Carolina State track team, a passing freight train clipped him,
severing his left leg from the mid-calf down. Seven years later,
Frasure is one of the fastest men in the U.S.
With the aid of a carbon-fiber prosthetic, Frasure ran 100 meters in
11.02 seconds, his personal best, to win an exhibition race at the
U.S. national championships in New Orleans in 1998. The time was
faster than that of three able-bodied decathletes competing at those
same nationals.
Frasure, who earned a bachelor's degree in engineering at N.C. State,
lowered his amputee world record from 11.33 to 11.17 in June's U.S.
Paralympic Trials, but his most impressive performances may come daily
on the N.C. State track, where he trains with Jones.
"Brian has to work, I'd say, 50 percent harder than other athletes,"
his coach, Trevor Graham, says. "Marion looks at him every day and
says, 'How do you run down the track with that thing on?'"
Frasure also works as a prosthetic resident at Hanger, the company
that makes the socket for his prosthetic leg. The Olympian, who earned
a medical degree in the certification program in prostheses at
Northwestern University, spends much of his time helping amputee
patients.
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