A Race Changes Lives in Cambodia

San Mao, center, the winner of the 10-kilometer, or 6.2-mile, race for athletes with artificial legs, shook hands with the second place winner in the 14th Angkor Wat International Half Marathon 2009. (Rahman Roslan for the International Herald Tribune)

December 8, 2009
By LIZ GOOCH
The New York Times

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA — At first, San Mao thought he had been shot in the leg.

It was a reasonable assumption on that day, nearly 20 years ago, given that Khmer Rouge soldiers were forcing him to carry ammunition across the Cambodian countryside. But when Mr. San Mao, then 17, found he was unable to get up from the forest floor, he realized that the lower part of his right leg was gone — blown off by one of the millions of land mines planted across the country during its decades of conflict. Many mines still lurk dangerously in rural areas.

After he lost his leg, Mr. San Mao was unable to resume his work clearing fields for farming. People looked down on him, he said, and no one would give him a job.

But on Sunday morning, any sense of despair seemed well behind him. Against the majestic backdrop of the Angkor Wat temple ruins, Mr. San Mao, 35, grinned broadly as he climbed a podium to be crowned the champion of the 10-kilometer, or 6.2-mile, race for athletes with artificial legs, held as part of the Angkor Wat International Half Marathon.

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