Paralympics

What we could have done with $70 million: Hire 1,400 teachers for a year. Send 120,000 tons of food to Afghanistan. Give a dollar to every hungry person in the Horn of Africa. Compensate American farmers for the livestock they lose every year to coyotes. Buy 134,000 tons of imported black plate steel. (Tariffs not included.) Reconstruct the rail line from Samarkand to Bukhara along the route of Uzbekistan's fabled silk road. Provide early intervention for 24,000 young disabled children.

Laurel Park Jazzy Idea captures Jameela in record time Owner-trainer Edwin Merryman 's Jazzy Idea swept past the leaders in the deep stretch Wednesday and set a course record in the $100,000 Jameela Stakes, the opening-day feature of the Laurel Park fall meeting. Ridden by Luis Garcia and sent to post at even money against eight other Maryland-bred fillies and mares, Jazzy Idea completed the distance over the firm turf in 1 minute, 7.45 seconds to better the mark set by Chasin Tiger in 2007.

CHRIS MURPHY'S summer may be cookout-free.The young Annapolitan will be either in St. Petersburg, Fla., or on Lake Lanier, outside Atlanta, getting ready to go for the gold in the 1996 Paralympic Sailing competition. The races are Aug. 18-22, at Lake Lanier.Murphy, skipper John Ross-Duggan of Orlando, Fla., and crew member Jim Leatherman of Baltimore learned just last week that they'd be representing the United States in the Paralympics. Their place was ensured when a protest after the 1995 national championships in Marblehead, Mass.

Daniel Romanchuk gives you a blank stare when you try and explain to him why he is an inspiration. He looks confused - why would anybody care to see him race, legs tucked under him, neck crammed forward, and be inspired? He's just a kid who likes to race. Daniel, 13, can tell you the name of the disease that robbed him of the use of his legs before birth - spina bifida - but he can't tell you anything about it. It's not important, and he doesn't care. If Daniel cared about the spina bifida, then maybe he wouldn't have started swimming independently at age 3. Maybe he wouldn't have started at the Bennett Blazers Physically Challenged Sports program when he was 2 years old, training in a range of sports from basketball to sled hockey.

Maybe you've seen the ads. They've been all over TV and in magazines like Time and Sports Illustrated. There is U.S. Paralympian Tatyana McFadden in her sleek titanium racing wheelchair, hunched over in mid-push, shoulder muscles rippling, a look of fierce determination on her face. The ads, from petroleum giant BP, call her "Lady Velocity" and carry the tag line "Team USA: Fueling Their Future. " Which is fitting, in a way. Because whatever is fueling Tatyana McFadden - whatever is pumping through her heart and coursing through her veins and energizing that ripped torso - medical science might want to study it someday.

Et cetera Snyder, McFadden win Paralympic gold Baltimore's Brad Snyder , 28, won his second gold medal of the London Paralympics on Friday, a year to the day after he was blinded by an improvised explosive device while serving with the Navy in Afghanistan. "It is an emotional day, but it's kind of a day of celebration," Snyder said after winning the 400-meter freestyle S11 gold in 4 minutes, 32.41 seconds, by a margin of 5.83. "I zeroed my focus on performance and was able to put a lot of the emotions away.

Swimming Long sets Paralympic record in 100 fly Jessica Long , who grew up in Middle River, broke a Paralympic record in winning the S8 women's 100-meter butterfly Thursday in London. Long, who had both lower legs amputated before age 2, finished in 1 minute, 10.32 seconds - 1.21 seconds in front of Kateryna Istomina of Ukraine. Shengnan Jiang of China was third, 2.96 seconds behind Long. Long, who won four golds in 2008 and three in 2004, will swim in as many as nine events in the London Games, which began Wednesday.

Paralympics Loyola's Wise, Snyder to swim in London Games Loyola University swimmer Joe Wise has been named to the U.S. team that will compete in the Paralympic Games in London from Aug. 29 to Sept. 9. In addition, coach Brian Loeffler will serve on the coaching staff, while Lt. Brad Snyder - a Navy veteran who lost his sight in an improvised explosive device attack in Afghanistan in September 2011 and is coached by Loeffler - also made the roster.

With the trials for this year's U.S. Paralympic swimming team a little more than a week away, Jessica Long came home to Middle River one night after a recent practice and began to feel a shooting pain in her stomach. After going to bed that night, the pain intensified. "It was the worst pain I had ever felt," Long recalled Friday. That is saying a lot, considering what Long has endured in her life. Long was born without fibulas in either leg, and both of her legs were amputated below the knees when she was 18 months old - five months after she was adopted by a Baltimore family from a Russian orphanage.

There's just something about the water in Baltimore. Maybe you knew that already, but it's worth repeating. The water here, it enables you to do almost anything. Michael Phelps sprang from these waters. Katie Hoff, too. But the swimming story I hope we'll all be able to appreciate this summer is Philip Scholz's quest to represent the United States in the Paralympics. Scholz is a freshman at Loyola College. Before I even tell you about what he's able to do in the water, you've got to understand what he has already been through.