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Abandoning the path of least resistance

Losing a leg in 2005 hasn't kept Ronnie Dickson from taking on new challenges.

By JOEY KNIGHT, Times Staff Writer
Published February 8, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [Brian Cassella | Times] Ronnie Dickson, 20, is participating in Saturday's 5K at the Gasparilla Distance Classic. He had to learn to run after getting a prosthesis nearly three years ago.

TAMPA - They call the sport bouldering. Essentially, it's rock climbing without a rope.

It has supplanted soccer as the source of Ronnie Dickson's athletic zeal. A 20-year-old champion boulderer, Dickson possesses a thick upper torso - the anatomical byproduct of his proficiency at bare-handedly pulling his body up the jagged sides of makeshift rocks.

Thing is, boulderers typically climb no higher than 10-12 yards. And Dickson, the fiercely driven sort that he is, needs mountains.

He has found one. Along the South Tampa waterfront, of all places.

Ronald Alexander Dickson is trusting his persistence and prosthesis to carry him to the summit, which in this case is the finish line of Saturday morning's Gasparilla Distance Classic 5-kilometer race.

"I'm up to two miles and my goal for the 5K is to just complete it, running the whole time with minimal stopping," Dickson said.

This is how Dickson has responded to being cut down, quite literally, at the precipice of adulthood - by slipping an electronic timing chip through his running shoelaces.

Beats having one on your shoulder.

"He wants to become somebody who will inspire other people to continue going," said Waldo Esparza, his Tampa-based prosthetist and a fellow amputee.

"He's a handsome young man, and to have your body disrupted in your prime is kind of rough. That's what happened to me. And he's bounced back. He has bounced back with elegance."

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The same sort of medical innovation that will allow Dickson to jog Bayshore Boulevard brought him into the world. According to his dad, Ronnie was one of the first 100 babies produced via GIFT gamete intrafallopian transfer fertilization.

"Ronnie was a very wanted child from the beginning," Ron Dickson said.

What he and his wife, Graciela, could've done without was the diagnosis 21/2 years later: Trevor's disease, a rare bone disorder.

"Pretty much, the growth plates in my left knee and my left ankle were out of whack," said Ronnie, who also speaks Spanish (his mother is Venezuelan). "By third grade my left leg was significantly shorter than my right leg."

A leg lengthening procedure didn't take, andRonnie developed noncancerous tumors that surfaced from the growth plate sites.

"His (left) leg grew fused in a position as if you were standing on your tiptoe on that leg," his father said.

Ronnie still played goal for his club soccer teams, and swam in the 200-yard freestyle and backstroke at Winter Haven High.

By his senior year at Winter Haven's Lake Region High, to which he transferred as a sophomore, Ronnie was taking advance placement classes and being elected homecoming king.

Inevitability, however, clouded the coronation.

By this stage, Ronnie's left knee practically had been fused at a 45-degree angle.

On June 29, 2005, three days before his 18th birthday, Ronnie had his left leg amputated above the knee at Tampa's Shriners Hospital for Children.

"And it's been great ever since," said Ronnie, who needed a three-month recovery before getting his first prosthesis. "The first two months are rough, and then after that it's just a learning process."

That includes learning to run.

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Not even Ronnie's postoperative phantom pain could suppress his ambitious streak.

An aspiring prosthetist, he's taking 21 credit hours this semester at USF and Hillsborough Community College, works eight hours a week at USF's student activities center and volunteers each Monday at Tampa Bay Prosthetics (Esparza's place of business).

Today, he uses what's known as a C-Leg, a state-of-the-art gadget with a carbon-fiber foot and electronic knee. Ronnie says after insurance and fundraising it still cost more than $50,000.

The first time he tried running on it, at Thanksgiving, he made it 50 yards.

"Insurance companies are not paying for you to run; they're just happy if you walk," said Esparza, who lost his left leg at 16 in a motorcycle accident. "Actually running is pressing the envelope in the sense that components get stressed out."

Ronnie presses on today, for a noble cause. He's the 5K team leader for the Challenged Athletes Foundation, a 10-year-old national group that provides grants to physically challenged athletes.

The CAF's Florida chapter is underwriting Saturday's Gasparilla 15K competitive wheelchair division, resuscitated after a 10-year absence. The prize purse is more than $10,000.

Ronnie will carry the CAF's proverbial flag - perfect for mounting atop a summit.

Gasparilla Distance Classic

Where: Downtown Tampa

When: Saturday - 15K wheelchair (7:25 a.m.), 15K (7:30), 5K (9:30), 5K Walk & Stroller Roll (9:50); Sunday - Marathon and half-marathon (6 a.m.)

Starting lines: Saturday races - Little Bayshore (adjacent to Publix); Sunday races - Platt and Parker

Late registration fees: $35 for 15K, $30 for 5K, $100 for marathon, $65 for half-marathon (no race-day registration for Sunday races)

For more information: www.tampabayrun.com

[Last modified February 7, 2008, 23:35:40]