Jean Driscoll

Jean Driscoll is an Olympic wheelchair racer with spina bifida. She won the women's wheelchair division of the Boston Marathon eight times, more than any other female athlete in any division. Her wins in Boston included seven consecutive first-place finishes from 1990 to 1996. Driscoll participated in four Summer Paralympic Games, winning a total of five gold, three silver, and four bronze medals in events ranging from 200 meters to the marathon.

Driscoll began a wheelchair in high school and became involved in a variety of wheelchair sports. She was recruited to play wheelchair basketball at the University of Illinois, and while there she also joined the school's wheelchair track and field team. She competed at her first Paralympics in 1988, taking bronze in the 200 and 400 meter races, silver in the 4×100 meter relay, and gold in the 4×200 meter relay.

Her first major win in racing came in 1989, when she beat Candace Cable at the Lilac Bloomsday 12k in Spokane, Washington. Following this success, her coach Marty Morse convinced her to try a marathon. Driscoll participated in the 1989 Chicago Marathon and finished fast enough to qualify for the next year's Boston Marathon.

Driscoll went on to win the 1990 Boston Marathon in a world best time of 1:43:17, beginning a seven-year winning streak in that race. She set a world record at the 1991 race with a time of 1:42:42, and won her fifth Boston and broke the world record a fifth time in 1994.

At the 1992 Paralympics, Driscoll won the gold medal in the 4×100 meter relay and competed in three other events—the 800, 1500, and 5000 metre races. Four years later at the Atlanta Games, she competed in four events and medaled in all of them, taking gold in the 10000 metres and the marathon, silver in the 5000 metres, and bronze in the 1500 metres. She added three more medals to her career total at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics, winning gold, silver, and bronze in the marathon, 1500 metres, and 5000 metres, respectively.

In 2012, she was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and earlier that year, The Lincoln Academy of Illinois granted Driscoll the Order of Lincoln award, the highest honor bestowed by the State of Illinois.

Driscoll is also a motivational speaker and international advocate for those with disabilities, and a philantrhopist. She has supported programming for athletes with disabilities by traveling to Ghana, West Africa several times and helping develop the first Paralympic athletes in history from that country.