Can an Aspie be athletic??

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It was a homecoming fit for a goddess.

Dripping in a quartet of gold medals, Michelle “Angel” Athenas of Huntington lifted her arms in triumph, soaking in the adulation as the cameras snapped images of her powerful frame.

Athenas, 34, who has autism, ADHD and is bipolar, returned home Sunday from Abu Dhabi where she won four gold medals at the 2019 Special Olympics World Games, shattering female records in powerlifting.

On Monday, elected officials, friends and family provided the gold medalist with a hero’s welcome at Family Residence and Essential Enterprises (FREE), an Old Bethpage facility that supports 4,000 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

“It’s dedication. It’s hard work,” Athenas said of her accomplishments. “You can’t give up … You have to eat, sleep and lift.”

Her journey was as difficult as it was unlikely.

Abandoned at birth by a drug-addicted mother, she bounced around the foster system in the Bronx, where family members said she suffered sexual and physical abuse and lived in squalid conditions.

By 1994, when she was taken in by Geri Athenas of West Islip, Angel was largely nonvocal. She had never stepped foot in a school, been vaccinated for a single disease or celebrated a single Christmas.

through a focus on athletics, and with the help of FREE, Athenas said her daughter soon came out of her shell, graduating from high school and coining herself “Angel.”

A visit to a Deer Park gym in 2014 turned Angel Athenas on to powerlifting. Family members said she never looked back, training six days a week, up to three hours a day.

Nicknamed by her teammates as ‘Secret Weapon’ and ‘Angel Dust,’ Angel Athenas first broke the women’s deadlifting record at the 2018 New York Special Olympics in Albany. In July, she won four gold medals in powerlifting at the 2018 U.S. Special Olympics in Seattle.

And last week, Angel Athenas, who weighs 164 pounds, conquered the globe at the Special Olympics World Games in the United Arab Emirates, competing with 7,500 other athletes from 195 countries, including 72 female powerlifters.

She won gold for bench press (134 pounds); squat (181 pounds); dead lift (254 pounds although she went up to 292 pounds) and for the cumulative weight total.

Angel Athenas, who resumed her training only hours after returning home Sunday, urged young weightlifting hopefuls not to be defined by their challenges or their disabilities.

“Keep moving forward,” she said. “Don’t be distracted. Conquer your game. Just keep going.”

The story of John Almeda keeps getting better. The Sacramento young man with non-verbal autism is preparing to leave for Boston next week. He won’t be there to do any sightseeing.

He has his sights set on the Boston Marathon. John qualified while finishing the California International Marathon last year on a broken ankle.

A local company was so inspired by his story, they decided to sponsor him. Total Nutrition asked for a meeting and John’s mother Vanessa tells said she was shocked to hear what they had to say. The first thing out of their mouths was–we sponsor athletes and we would love to take John on. We think he’s amazing and they’re paying all of our airfare,” Vanessa said.

The Boston Marathon is over and local runner John Almeda finished in three hours, 52 minutes, and three seconds.

His half marathon split was one hour and 39 minutes.

He placed 12,908 overall and came in 8,929 in the men’s race.

When Austin Riley of Uxbridge took first place with fellow driver Carter Fartuch at last month’s Saleen Cup race in Portland, Ore., he once again proved something the auto racing world has taken note of for a while: The 20-year-old with autism can really handle a race car.

Riley and Fartuch were fastest in the young drivers class in Steve Saleen’s new series for the Saleen 1 — a turbo-charged, mid-engine race car that pushes out about 450 horsepower. It marked the first time in a car with that much power for Riley, and it was Saleen himself who invited the driver and his father Jason to Portland for the debut of the five-race series in mid-July.

“The last six to eight weeks have been crazy for Austin,” said Jason Riley, whose son is competing in his third year on the Micra Cup circuit and finished third in a race earlier this summer, marking the first time on record that a Canadian driver with autism has ever recorded a podium result.

“Austin made history in the Micra Cup … Then Saleen called us to see if we were interested, if we were willing to come to the race in Portland and drive the new car (and) it didn’t take long to think about that one.”

Riley has watched his son grow in confidence and ability over the past several years, driving full-time with their Racing with Autism program, which also shares Austin’s story in schools worldwide. He was hoping for the best when they flew to Portland, partly because Austin’s race experience up to that point had been in go-karts and 120-horsepower Micra Cup cars.

Saleen, who launched the series March 1, leaves the door open for prospective racers with an arrive-and-drive policy. For each race, 20 track-ready S1 cars are available to drivers who can pay the cost — about $42,000 for one race. That includes a crew chief plus race mechanics to prep and maintain the car.

Austin is returning to the Micra Cup series, but Saleen liked what he saw in Portland.

An up-and-coming racer by the name of Austin Riley will be competing for the opportunity of a lifetime this weekend in Las Vegas.

Should Riley, 20, win the inaugural Saleen Cup Young Driver’s class championship at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, he will secure a paid seat in Saleen’s GT4 entry for the entire 2020 GT4 America championship.

Riley enters the weekend at the top of the Young Driver’s class points standings with a six-point lead over his nearest competitor, and remains a favorite for the title having not finished worse than second over the course of the four races contested so far – an amazing feat in it’s own right.

But while Riley’s on-track success is unquestioned, his impact on the racing world has been defined by overcoming off-track challenges to become an accomplished driver. Riley has achieved an important milestone when he became North America’s first racer car driver with autism.

Riley was first diagnosed with the disorder when he was 12, but despite his diagnosis, he has enjoyed success in every form of racing that he has competed in, winning multiple karting championships before moving up to cars when he was 18.

For Riley, as a massive motorsports enthusiast, the opportunity to race has been a dream come true.

“I’ve always had a passion for cars and motorsports,” Riley said. “I’ve watched Formula One for years. I’ve watched IndyCar, NASCAR. I’ve watched pretty much every kind of racing there is around the world.”

Riley’s first taste of racing came just two weeks shy of his eighth birthday, when his father, Jason, took him to a go kart track near their hometown of New York, Ontario. Jason received a flyer from the track in the mail and figured his son would enjoy a trip to the track.

“Basically at that point in our lives, Austin was struggling pretty badly in school,” Jason Riley said. “He hadn’t at that point been diagnosed with autism. We were trying to find things that he enjoyed doing to get him out of his room.

“All he wanted to do was stay in his room and play with his cars or play racing games because that was really the only place in the world where he wasn’t bullied and picked on for being different.

“I figured that his love for cars would transcend into a love for driving, so I showed him the flyer and he looked at me and then looked at the flyer and looked back again and said, ‘Dad, why would I want to do that? I suck at everything. If I go, I won’t be any good. People will make fun of me’.”

But Jason did not give up. Still confident that karting would be an activity his son would enjoy, he continued to ask Austin if he’d give it a shot.

“Every day, I’d come home from work, grab the same flyer, go back up to his room and say ‘Come on, buddy. Give it a try’,” Jason said. “After about four weeks went by, I was coming up the stairs with the flyer on a Friday afternoon and he stopped me and said, ‘Dad, stop asking me the question. I’m tired of hearing it. I’ll go to the track. I’m going to do one lap just to make you happy, and then I’m coming off and we’re never coming back’.”

Figuring that was the best offer he’d get, Jason agreed to the deal and took his son to the track the following week. Austin took off and made a lap, just as promised. But then he didn’t pit. In fact, he didn’t stop at all.

Even after the checkered flag flew, Austin continued to make laps around the track as the marshals tried to stop him. Eventually, Jason came out onto the track to help. Once Austin stopped in front of him, Jason realized why his son did not want to stop turning laps.

“He stopped about five feet away from me, and even with his helmet on and a head sock, I could see the biggest smile that I’d ever seen,” Jason said. “It was at that moment that I knew we had found something.”

Austin’s racing career had begun, and for the next several years, he successfully raced go karts, winning three titles. His story began to make headlines, and Austin and his father toured across North America and around the world to share his story. Austin’s story helped inspire other people with autism and their families to follow their dreams, including many in Canada.

“At our home karting track where Austin’s career started, he was the first,” Jason said. “There were no other kids with autism. There were no other kids with disabilities.

“Now you go there on any weeknight, they arrive and drive. They have at least 30 kids per week with autism that are racing.”

As Austin progressed in karts, his desire to race cars became larger. He graduated from the Skip Barber Racing School in 2014, becoming the first person with autism to do so.

But like so many other families with sons and daughters who aspired to race, the Riley’s did not have the significant amount of money needed to continue funding Austin past karts. It appeared that his racing career would eventually end there.

But that changed one day when Jason met a man inspired by Austin’s story.

“We were racing at a go kart track in Quebec and we had a knock on the trailer door in between sessions, and it was this man that I had never met before,” Jason said. “His name was Metod Topolink and he wanted to meet Austin.

“What he told us in that short meeting was that he had a son with his wife Marie that was autistic as well, and in a very emotional plug, he said Austin gave them hope because they had seen what he had been able to accomplish.

“They wanted to kind of give back to Austin, so they wanted to see if he could race a car.”

A successful businessman, as well as a racer himself, Topolink wanted to fund a ride for Austin in the Nissan Micra Cup Series, a spec series that races Nissan hatchbacks across Ontario and Quebec.

Topolink rented out a track and provided a car for Austin to test. After a successful session, Topolink provided funding for Austin to race the entire 2017 Micra Cup season.

Though the first Micra Cup season proved to be a tough one for Austin, he returned in 2018 and improved immensely, scoring his first top five in the second race of a doubleheader at Calabogie Motorsports Park in Ontario. He finished his sophomore season ninth in the overall points standings after finishing 17th in the season prior.

“It’s a very competitive series,” Austin said of the Mirca Cup. “You’ve got like 24 cars on the track at one time. To be the best in that series, it all comes down to who’s driving the car.”

Austin’s improved performance in Micra Cup competition caught the attention of Jeff Lail, the Race Series Manager for the Saleen Cup.

Having previously witnessed Austin’s test at Skip Barber, Lail, who was in charge of recruiting drivers for the series, knew he had talent.

Ironically enough, Jason reached out to Lail earlier this year for more information on the series. The two then put together a deal for Austin to race in the Young Driver’s class during the series’ inaugural race at Portland International Raceway in July.

“I was very impressed with the way Austin held himself and performed,” Lail said of Austin’s first Saleen Cup race. “He was teamed up with a driver, Carter Fartuch, so they shared the car in Portland and they did very well.

“[They] stayed out of trouble, stayed clean, never had any off-track excursions, and they were able to win the first race in Portland. Steve Saleen was very impressed with his [Austin’s] skill level and supported him, so now he’s running the full season.”