Disability, no barrier to achieving

Sarah Newland-Martin, with no legs, has set world records internationally, beaten able-bodied persons at swimming and for her grit and determination was awarded Jamaica’s Sportswoman of the Year in 1966.

She has gotten 39 gold, silver and bronze medals during her 12 years of competitive sports both here and abroad, proving that a disability is not a barrier to achieving.

“In 1965 when there used to be the annual Pepsi two-and-a-half-mile swim across the Harbour, I entered the race,” Newland-Martin told All Woman, while explaining her first competitive sporting event.

“I was the only disabled woman in the race – everybody else was able bodied. I came fifth in the women’s section – finishing the race in 1 hour, 11 minutes and 43 seconds. My time was faster than many of the men,” she recalls. There were 12 women in the race and 120 men. Maybe she would have done better, she said, if it was not for the droves of spectators flocking into the water and impeding the race when it was announced that she had no feet.

“My coach, John Lopez, was reluctant to let me enter initially but I persuaded him. I wanted to do it to encourage my disabled brothers and sisters. It was a lot of work though because I had to do at least 120 laps a day,” she said. That race netted her the Sportswoman of the Year award in 1966 and whetted her appetite for competition.

“In 1966, I wanted to enter the Commonwealth Games but I could not because there was no category for me,” she said. Back then an amputee was not considered disabled which left her in no-man’s land as she was not eligible to compete with the able bodied either.

By 1971, however she was competing in swimming, wheelchair track and field and wheelchair basketball at the international level.

“I was competing internationally from 1971. In 1973, I competed in Peru, 1975 in Mexico, 1978 in Brazil and 1980 in Holland,” she said.

While in Brazil she received five gold medals for swimming and track and field and two years later in Holland she set two world records.

“In Holland, I set two world records – one in breaststroke and the other in wheelchair hundred metres track,” she said.

Her achievements did not go unnoticed and in 1980 she was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Jamaican government.

Her outstanding sporting achievements are not the only areas in which this remarkable woman displays her raw talent for overcoming the odds. Her early life also shows this.

She was born at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) with a congenital deformity in her legs. The first child for her parents, they left her in the hospital when they realised that her legs were basically useless. From there it was on to Maxfield Park Children’s Home which she called home for at least the first eight years of her life.

Her case attracted the attention of Sir John Golding, one of the founding fathers of the Mona Rehabilitation Centre in St Andrew. He arranged for her legs to be amputated.

“I used to wear what they call ‘peg leg.’ Then when I went to Holy Childhood I got artificial legs,” she said. According to her she never lacked love growing up without her parents in an orphanage. But it was a traumatic experience for her when she met them at 24 years-old.

“When I started working as a secretary at the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) in 1968, a lady, who turned out to be my cousin, gave me my parents address,” she said. The lady turned out to be a cousin who had somehow tracked her down. She wrote to her parents and a meeting was arranged.

“I went into shock when I saw them. It was very traumatic and I became ill as a result. It was hard having spent your entire life thinking you had no one and then to discover your parents and six brothers,” she recalls. Since then she has maintained a good relationship with her family.

Newland-Martin is also the first female general secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and has been for the last 13 years. She started out as a volunteer teaching swimming there in 1965 and was offered a job in the 1980s. While telling All Woman about her years there she took the opportunity to appeal for help for the YMCA.

“We have 172 boys who are high school dropouts. We are trying to set up a canteen to feed them. We also are trying to upgrade and repair some of the facilities here. We would appreciate any sort of help we could get,” she said.

The changes and growth that she has seen in the lives of the young people she works with are part of what motivates her to continue in her job.

She does Guidance and Counselling and mentors other disabled persons at Abilities Foundation. She is the Vice Chairwoman of the National Advisory Council for persons with disabilities, a member of the Juvenile Advisory Council, the Polio Foundation, Jamaica Sports and Paraplegic Club and also the Optimist Club of New Kingston.

According to her unemployment and lack of training are the biggest obstacles facing the disabled in Jamaica.

“You have to work doubly hard as a disabled person because you have to prove yourself – to show that you can do the work like anybody else,” she said. A very active Christian at Bethel Baptist Church, Newland-Martin has been married for seven years.