Erik Hightower says he is all about speed on wheels. Specifically — a wheelchair. He's fast enough to be among the world's elite athletes as a member of the U.S. team that competed in the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing. He's training for the 2012 games and may shoot for 2016 as well.
This weekend, the 23-year-old paralympian from Glendale, Ariz., who was born with spina bifida, met up with the Timken Co. in Canton to shoot an in-house promotional video for the manufacturer.
The pairing of the world-class athlete and Canton maker of steel and bearings is not so odd.
The addition of new ceramic Timken bearings to his highly specialized racing wheelchair helped Hightower reach personal best speeds in competitions. His fastest time in the 100-meter sprint in 2008 was 14.49 seconds. His best in the 200-meter race was 25.88 seconds.
Hightower has been racing ever since he was 9 years old. His parents pushed him to race after learning about the competitions from the Spina Bifida Association.
While Hightower said he hated racing the first three years, he got better — and then learned to love it.
That culminated in the trip to China with his racing wheelchair and its upgraded Timken bearings.
''I could see my times getting better and better,'' Hightower said Saturday. He said he couldn't necessarily feel the difference when he raced initially on the upgraded chair. ''But the times were showing there was a difference.''
Where his wheelchair would coast for perhaps 50 meters after he reached full speed with the old bearings, it can now coast upwards of 150 meters, he said. ''They definitely are a lot better.''
There's nothing in the Paralympic rule books that restricts the kind of bearings used in racing wheelchairs, Hightower said. Rules cover other parts of the wheelchair, including tires, but ''bearings are whatever you can come up with,'' he said.
Putting in better ball bearings wasn't his idea, he said. ''It never crossed my mind.''
Instead, it came from his father, a Honeywell engineer who works with Timken. His dad, Rich, talked with engineering friends at Timken about finding ways to reduce friction in the wheelchair to help Erik go faster.
''They came up with bearings. And it definitely was a help,'' Hightower said.
Engineers being engineers, they studied the wheelchair and its parts in early January 2008.
''It was a lot of days out in the garage, making sure the measuring was right on,'' Hightower said. ''My dad did the measuring and e-mailed in the specs.''
What his father and the Timken engineers came up with incorporated high-end ceramic ball bearings with a noncontact seal that Timken typically makes for highly specialized aerospace and health products.
Hightower said he got the new bearings in May and starting trial competitions shortly afterward.
''I put the new bearings in right before I qualified [for the China games],'' he said.
Now a lot of other racers are asking him where they can get the same bearings, he said.
''I usually get one or two e-mails a week,'' he said. ''Word is getting around.''
Hightower did not get a medal in the Beijing games, which were held at the same time and in the same venues as the Olympics.
He is a medal winner in other national and global competitions, including a bronze medal in the 2007 Parapan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, and first and second place finishes in the U.S. Paralympics Track & Field National Championships in Atlanta.
本文转自：China Industry News
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