FBC Birmingham butterfly swimmer set for 2004 Paralympic games in Greece

A world-ranked women’s swimmer and member of First Baptist Church, Birmingham, is plunging into the second-largest sporting event in the world.
   
“From veteran swimmers I hear that there’s nothing like being in your first Paralympic games — I’m really looking forward to that,” said Angel Langner, ranked fourth in the world among women’s Paralympic butterfly stroke swimmers. She was ranked second earlier this year.
   
When competing the 22-year-old hears her name called, stands to her full three feet, nine-inch frame, takes a deep breath and hits the water for 50 meters of the butterfly stroke. For 43 seconds her body, willpower and emotion will drive her to accomplish what no Olympic swimmer does. When swimming the “fly” as she and other swimmers call it, she’ll take more than twice the number of strokes an Olympic swimmer does.
   
Her 50-meter swim is 45 arm cycles in 43 seconds to an Olympic swimmer’s 15–22 arm cycles, she said.
   
Three times in international competition, twice in Argentina and once in Canada, she has assumed her poolside stance and competed among the best Paralympic fly swimmers in the world.
   
September 17–28 she’ll be poolside in Greece competing in the 2004 Paralympic Games. She will be among more than 4,000 athletes competing from 120 countries.
   
Although Paralympic games have been around internationally for a long time, U.S. Paralympics was created in 2001 as a division of the U.S. Olympic Committee to further enhance programs, funding and opportunities for people with physical disabilities to participate in Paralympic sports.
   
Paralympic athletes must undergo intense training at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, pass drug testing and endure the rigors of national and international competitions.
   
The 2004 Paralympics will follow the 2004 Olympics and use the same venues, featuring 21 different sports, 18 of which are also contested in the Olympics.
   
Langner said her disability that makes her eligible for the Paralympics is dwarfism, but asthma and tendinitis on her left side sometimes create additional challenges.
   
But even with a disability thrown in, the event is all about focus, timing and skill.
   
“I used to get really nervous, but we do a lot of visualization work and it’s gotten better for me. Still, when you get up there and there’s tons of people and you’ve got your biggest competitor standing next to you it’s pretty nerve-racking,” she said.
   
Nonetheless, she has been swimming 6,000 to 7,000 meters a day since May at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to prepare for the Paralympics. Her training concluded at the end of August when she entered final training in San Diego for two weeks. She flys to Athens on Sept. 10.
   
“I just wake up with goals in mind — realize you don’t get there without the practice and the dedication,” she said.
   
The long months and thousands of meters of swimming will come down to one 50-meter swim in order for Langner to accomplish her goal. But whatever the outcome, the process has taught valuable life lessons and reliance on God.
   
“This summer it’s taught me so much about responsibility and what it takes to get things done,” she said. “I rely on God just to get me through the practice. Often I’ll pray during long sets,” she said.
   
Langner, who has been swimming competitively since she was 8 years old, said her summer league swimming coach during her high school years, Bogey Fiddler, encouraged her to specialize in the butterfly and enter the Paralympics.
   
“The butterfly is the reason I’m going to the Paralympics. It’s hard and it’s rough on my shoulders but I guess you could say it’s my favorite,” she said. Langner has made the U.S. National Paralympic swim team every year since 2001.
   
For years she trained and swam at Birmingham’s Altadena Valley Country Club and more recently at the Lakeshore Foundation, an approved Olympic training facility.
   
The graduate of Vestavia Hills High School is a secondary education major at Auburn University and aspires to become a special education teacher.
   
Her two sisters and one younger brother are athletic and also swim — yes, the butterfly. “We’re all fliers,” she said.