In Paralympics Long Jumping, a Sprint and Leap Into the Unknown Lex Gillette, left, with his guide, Wesley Williams, at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif. Gillette, who has been blind since he was a child, holds the world record for his classification of the Paralympics. CHULA VISTA, Calif. - Wesley Williams placed his arms on the shoulders of Lex Gillette, a blind long jumper, to line him up on the runway, then guided him down the track to let him feel the landing pit. Gillette made a couple of small hops into the sand. Williams then steered Gillette back to the start of the runway and put him as far to the left in the lane as possible, because Gillette usually veers right when he runs. After positioning him, Williams stood down the runway, in the middle of the lane, at the lip of the sand pit. He raised his arms in the air and, with the steady precision of a drummer, began to clap. Lai! Williams shouted, using the Chinese word for "come" because he finds that it carries better in the din of stadium noise at competitions. Relying heavily on muscle memory, Gillette sprinted down the track. He knew to jump on his 16th step, after more than 108 feet. He listened to Williams's call as confirmation that he was running straight. As he approached the sand, Williams stepped to the side. When Gillette, 27, sprints down the runway, he cannot see where he is going. He cannot see the line he is supposed to jump from, and as he soars through the air, he cannot tell when or where he is going to land. Gillette, with the help of Williams, his guide, holds the world record for his classification of the Paralympics, at 6.73 meters, or a little more than 22 feet. "The first time I saw him jump," his mother, Verdina Gillette-Simms, said, "I thought, "Oh, my God." You have to develop trust. You're putting your son's life in someone else's hands. The United States has a robust Paralympic program and will be expected to finish near the top of the medal standings at this summer's Games in London, which begin two weeks after the Olympics. The United States will send 54 Paralympians, second only to China, and five of the American athletes are visually impaired. But of the 58,000 children who are visually impaired in the United States, 70 percent are not afforded the opportunity to participate in meaningful physical activity, according to the United States Association of Blind Athletes. Many blind athletes have lost opportunities because of cuts to physical education programs, and a stigma still exists, coaches and athletes said, that leaves parents concerned that sports put blind children in harm's way. "It's not easy," Gillette said, pedaling on a stationary bike next to the track here one morning. It's taken years and years of work. Blind since he was 8, Gillette has been training here with a focus on winning a gold medal this summer. He won silver in Athens in 2004 and in Beijing in 2008. He set the Paralympic record this spring at a meet in Arizona. Gillette grew up in Raleigh, N.C., raised primarily by his mother, who has been legally blind since she was 18 because of glaucoma. Gillette was born healthy and with the ability to see. At 3, doctors discovered that Gillette had a cataract, a cloudy film, in his left eye. But in recovery from treating the cataract, he sustained a retinal detachment and completely lost the vision in his left eye. The partial blindness did not stop Gillette. "He would jump off everything there was," Gillette-Simms said. His vision began deteriorating again when he was 8, and over the course of a year, he had 10 operations. While her son was wheeled into the operating room for one procedure, Gillette-Simms said she heard the thumping of his fists and feet and a piercing scream. "I think that's the moment I realized he wasn't going to see again," she said. Gillette picked up Braille quickly but resisted using a cane, even when taking the garbage out, preferring to listen for the sounds of cars coming down the street. He stayed active, playing basketball and even taking long bike rides with his mother. "I always had him involved in things," Gillette-Simms said. I wanted him to be a well-rounded individual. He said his memory of what a track looked like was fuzzy. "It's kind of like a dream that never fades away," he said.