My friend Nick Katsounis crossed the ultimate finish line on Jan. 19 at the untimely age of 58.

Nick was a lion of a man. He lost his leg in an auto accident while in his 20s, but he never let his disability keep him from a full and active life that focused on championing the rights of disabled and promoting both recreational and competitive sports for wheelchair athletes. He was the vice president of the Long Island Wheelchair Athletic Club, one of the founding members of the Long Island Wheelers Wheelchair Basketball Team, director of Wheelchair Athletics for the Greater Long Island Running Club (GLIRC), director of the GLIRC-managed Salomon Smith Barney North American Wheelchair Championship 10K Race, and a very vocal member of USA Track and Field's Athletics for the Disabled Committee.

My friend Nick was not always an easy man to get along with. He was often gruff and short tempered, especially when he was reacting to slights against the disabled. He was a man of much righteous anger, an anger that he was quick to direct against any person or organization who didn't give disabled individuals in general, and disabled athletes in particular, the respect that Nick knew they were due. That righteous anger very often got him into trouble. But it even more often stood him in good stead. It motivated him to doubled and redoubled efforts on behalf of wheelchair athletics and wheelchair athletes. He hated to take no for an answer and, more often than not, his drive and enthusiasm got positive and tangible results.

For the past several year, Nick focused on a good deal of his considerable energy on two very specific goals - promoting wheelchair athletic programs for youngsters here on Long Island and turning the Salomon Smith Barney North American Wheelchair Championship 10K Race into the finest wheelchair race in the world. He was spectacularly successful in achieving both of those goals.

Nick took wheelchair athletes under his wing, coached them to the best of his ability, encouraged them, and made sure to instill in them the same fierce competitiveness that marked his own career as a wheelchair racer. Jesse Walsh of Huntington, now 16 years old, has benefited from Nick's tutelage for the past several years and has developed into one of the most exciting junior wheelchair racers anywhere in the United States. Nick's dedicated work with Tunisian immigrant Kamal Ayari resulted in Kamal winning the Wheelchair Division in both the 2000 New York City Marathon and the 2000 Marine Corps Marathon.

The Salomon Smith Barney North American Wheelchair Championship Race was Nick's pride and joy. His energy, his enthusiasm and his hard work has brought that event from the humblest of beginnings to what for the last few years has been the finest assemblage of wheelchair racers in the world. Thanks to Nick, Paralympic superstars from as far away as Australia, Switzerland and South Africa have joined the top racers from the United States in fierce but friendly competition on the roads of Long Island.

Nick will be there in spirit on June 24 as, in its 10th anniversary running, the race will make its debut as the "Salomon Smith Barney Nick Katsounis Memorial Wheelchair Championship 10K Race," to continue Nick Katsounis's memory and the outstanding work that he has done for wheelchair athletics on Long Island.

Nick would have loved seeing this in the Farmingdale Observer. I can practically hear him say, "Hey, if that's what it takes to get the wheelchair athletes some recognition, let's go for it!"

(Mike Polansky is President of the Greater Long Island Running Club).