CARRABASSETT VALLEY – With clear blue skies overhead and the morning sun just beginning to peek over the hills to the east, Dale Weymouth couldn’t wait to get the Special Olympics started on Monday morning.

As athletes filed into the snowshoe venue, renewed old friendships and waited to be assigned to heats, Weymouth was geared up, warmed up and ready.

All across Sugarloaf/USA, and at neighboring Carrabassett Valley Academy, athletes got to work on Monday, the opening day of competition for Special Olympics Maine’s 35th annual winter games. Maine was the first state to stage winter Special Olympics games.

More than 500 athletes, 200 coaches and 200 volunteers headed to Sugarloaf for the 23rd straight year, and they were greeted by perfect conditions: Temperatures hovered around 20 degrees, and there was no wind nor clouds.

Weymouth was among the first to strap snowshoes to his feet, and with 20 minutes to go until races began, he had the snow to himself.

Weymouth jogged and hopped, stretched and strained, paced and pranced … all in the hopes of improving his times in the 50- and 100-meter snowshoe races.

“That’s an important thing to do, exercising before your event,” the 22-year-old Embden man explained shortly before his race began.

Weymouth, who competed for the L.C. Dill Center team of Skowhegan, is an energetic man who in one breath talks trash that would make an NFL star take notes, and in the next turns to his fellow competitors, urges them on, and exchanges high-fives.

“This one’s mine!” he exclaimed after being assigned to a snowshoe heat.

As soon as another athlete was told to join Weymouth in the staging area, however, his attitude changed … briefly.

“All right guys,” he told the other assembled snowshoers. “Let’s do it!”

Just a few minutes later, he reverted to the role of ruthless competitor again … just as briefly.

“I’m gonna kick some butt out there today,” he said. “I can’t wait to see myself in the newspaper again.”

But first, he had to race. And before he could do that, he gave a couple of important body parts a pep talk.

“Feet, do your stuff,” he said, glancing quickly down at his snowshoes. “Don’t fail me.”

Weymouth’s feet didn’t fail him … but his right snowshoe did.

Weymouth blew a shoe while tromping at full speed about 20 meters into the 50-meter time trial, staggered for a step or two, then did what most Special Olympians do, on a much more private scale, every single day.

He persevered.

Weymouth churned home third in his trials heat – finals are scheduled for today – then looked down in amazement.

“I thought it was tight enough,” Weymouth said. “I thought I was gonna feel it coming off, but I didn’t.”

Nearby, Rose Wallace’s snowshoe woes didn’t begin when she started running.

They began when she arrived at the venue and found out that she wouldn’t be able to compete in her own canary-yellow shoes.

All athletes wear the same kind of shoes, which are provided by the Special Olympics.

“I didn’t know,” a concerned Wallace kept saying. “Nobody told us.”

Wallace, a 41-year-old from Sidney, traded in her shoes for an equally speedy-looking pair of blue L.L. Bean shoes, and proceeded to put the experience behind her.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said while waiting at the starting line. “I’m gonna take off like a bat out of you know what.”

According to Tom Gipson, the assistant director of the Personal Support Program at Augusta’s Employment Specialists of Maine, Wallace is a big reason ESM traveled to the winter games.

“Rose has been doing this for over 20 years. She’s our hero,” Gipson said, explaining that Wallace attended last year’s games as an independent athlete, but returned to ESM and started lobbying for a team delegation this year.

She got her wish: 10 ESM athletes headed to Carrabassett Valley for the games, which run through Tuesday.

“Her goal is eventually to get to the World Games,” Gipson said. “Of course, she would prefer the World Games were held at Disney World.”

The Special Olympics are more than a once-a-year field trip. They are billed as a year-round training and competition program for people of all ages with mental retardation.

You need look no farther than Wallace to find proof of that.

Four weeks ago, it took Wallace more than a minute to cover 100 meters. On Monday, sporting the new shoes she was “forced” to wear, she clocked a 38-second run.

In a heat of the 50-meter snowshoe event, 39-year-old Pam Start of Rockland, an ESM teammate of Wallace’s, finished her race, took off her shoes, and told her coaches she had kept her promise.

“I told you I wasn’t going to be a sourpuss,” Start told her coaches.

Start explained that she had felt the effects of pre-competition butterflies on Sunday and Monday morning, but was finally able to shake them.

The cure?

“The doughnuts and [Coach] Tom [Gipson],” she said.

With her day’s competitive events over, Start could focus her attention on the rest of the day’s events.

A top priority: “We’re going to pig out later,” she said.

And as Gipson pointed out, the competition is only a part of the Special Olympics experience.

“The big deal is these green dots,” he said, pointing at green stickers affixed to some of his athletes’ nametags. “[These mean] snowmobile rides for everybody.”

Every ESM athlete within earshot – each with a coveted green dot on their tag – cheered loudly before they ambled away.

Hot chocolate awaited. Pigging out was on the agenda. And of course, there were snowmobile rides for everybody.

All in all, it’s just another special day at the Special Olympics.