Brian McKeever vigilant on fun as initial Paralympian in Winter Olympics Sport

Brian McKeever trains forward of the mens 50km cross-country skiing competition in Vancouver. Photograph: Todd Korol/Reuters

The mixed award winners, the glorious pusses of the mountainous hills, the Lindsey Vonns and Bode Millers, have taken the excellence and sponsors" dollars but the chances are that a Canadian cross-country skier with medium aspiration competence hide in at the last notation and take the unaccepted pretension as "athlete of the 2010 winter Olympics".

On Sunday Brian McKeever, the initial contestant to contest in the Winter Olympic and the Paralympic games, will get the possibility to magnitude himself opposite the world"s most appropriate in the men"s 50km cross-country skiing. He is not expected to win bullion but since he has less than 10% of his prophesy the stress of the impulse lies not in where he finishes, usually that he competes.

"The Olympics, at the ideal, is about the athletes of the universe entrance together and competing on satisfactory and turn personification fields," McKeever said. "That"s a unequivocally pleasing thing. It unequivocally is about receiving part." A pleasing thing, indeed.

McKeever, a multi-medal leader at the Paralympic games, routinely competes with his hermit Robin as his guide but tomorrow he will be on his own – a daunting awaiting for any one concerned in the mass begin of the 50km but well-nigh unthinkable for the Canadian, who has usually singular marginal vision. "The starts can be kind of funny but it"s kind of organized disharmony at times," he says. His tactic will be to find his place and afterwards follow the contestant in front of him turn the route. "The main thing will be to recollect the alternative skiers aren"t there to assistance me but to kick me."

Twelve years ago, McKeever – a rarely rated cross-country skier at the time – was diagnosed with Stargardt"s disease, a genetic condition that affects the executive prophesy ("I see the doughnuts – not the hole in the middle"). His father additionally has the disease. Two years later, he was spoken legally blind.

"After the diagnosis all these emotions rushed in and you try to have clarity of it, and infrequently we fright the worst. But I looked at my father and saw how it never stopped him. I realised it didn"t have to be a tying cause and it"s most appropriate only to get on vital life. To be honest with you, I don"t think this has taken most afar from me,"" he says.

Five Paralympians have competed in the Olympics, but all have been summer-sport athletes, together with the American curtain Marla Runyan who, similar to McKeever, suffered from Stargardt"s. She accomplished eighth in the 2000 women"s 1500m final.

McKeever warranted his place on the Canadian group in Dec after winning a 50km robust competition in Alberta. His preference was voiced in January, and as the world"s media descended on Vancouver the skier was impressed with talk requests. "It was transparent true afar that this is no longer a good Canadian cross-country ski story," says Chris Dornan, the press military officer for the Canadian cross-country ski team. "Everybody, but everybody, called."

And what those who called found was a self-effacing immature man, as medium as he is inspiring. "I"m not going to mount here and contend I"m going to win a bullion medal. I don"t think I have the experience for that. But what I can contend is I"m going to go in to the competition in the most appropriate figure of my hold up and, hopefully, when I strike the finish line I can contend that was the most appropriate competition I could have had," he says.

Confronted by his standing as a story maker, or by the idea that his Olympic appearance speaks to a broader law about multitude and the misled perspective towards infirm athletes, McKeever is roughly embarrassed. Others can have confidant statements, he prefers still reflection. "No one unequivocally sets out to be a purpose model. But what I would contend is that I proposed out you do this for fun and if there is any summary I would put out there it is to keep carrying fun. If you do that you can grasp good things."