JIM MARTINSON plays basketball and tennis, competes in marathons, skis on snow and water, and is generally pretty active for a 52-year-old.

His next goal is to try windsurfing.

You tell him that just because he has no legs it won't ever happen.

A Vietnam War land mine explosion inflicted severe physical injuries, but couldn't rob Martinson of a resilient spirit, creative mind and determination to enjoy life. He put those to work as a pioneer of sports wheelchairs, a specialty product that has seen its technological breakthroughs utilized throughout the mobility market.

"There are thousands of people out there who just want to live a normal life," says Martinson, who helped to address that desire by founding the Shadow line of sports chairs in 1982 before selling it 10 years later to Sunrise Medical. "I've watched these products change people's lives."

A Niche with Cachet THE JIM Martinsons sports chair rolling, so to speak. Industry leaders such as Sunrise and Invacare Corp.-which control an estimated 90 percent of the market-as well as such specialty manufacturers as Eagle Sportschairs, Colours by Permobil and TiSport, have turned the sports chair into a research, development and marketing tool for the standard chair, as well as a niche market itself.

"The sports product is not a big moneymaker, but there's a larger mission than turning a buck," says Judy Hirigoyen, vice president of marketing for Sunrise, Longmont, Colo. "There's a trickle-down effect that shows up in the mainstream products. There's also an emotional benefit that inspires the industry and the world at large."

This is an industry where, according to the participants, the business realities will always be intertwined with the spirit of achievement.

"We want our chairs to reflect the joy of life," says Doug Champa, public relations director for Colours by Permobil and a chair-user. "We want to destroy the [stereotyped] perception of the disabled. Life can be just as great after disability as before. We're having a good time, and we project that with our product."

The sports chair has come a long way since its start in the early 1970s. Back then, an athlete took a rigid 50-pound standard wheelchair, put it on a basketball court, and called it a basketball wheelchair. But it was too heavy, awkward and dangerous for sports.

Quickly, the tinkering began. A caster wheel here, a steering handle there, camber to ease the wheel push. Materials used in race cars and bicycles were adapted to lighten the load and improve maneuverability.

When the running bug bit Martinson in the 1980s, he modified a chair for road-racing, winning the Boston Marathon in 1981 and again in 1994. Occasionally, he broke the rules, because the rules got in the way.

"We'd get DQ'd [disqualified] in a race. That was fun," Martinson says. "If we didn't push the envelope, it wouldn't have allowed us to build a better mousetrap. I said that someday individuals with disabilities could have a sport-specific product for every activity."

Evolution Leads to Revolution THAT'S PRETTY MUCH where the industry is today. Wheelchairs continue to be re-engineered for different sports. The inline skating wheel was added to sports wheelchairs in the early 1990s and made them more maneuverable The recent introduction of the anti-tip fifth wheel for basketball chairs has taken that sport to a new level, Martinson says.

"The maneuverability of the new all-court chair is so phenomenal, you have to be strapped into the chair or you'll get tossed to the floor," Martinson says. "It's turning basketball into an athletic finesse game, rather than using the equipment to cheat. Same thing for rugby."

That's right, wheelchair rugby.

"If you were seeing [quad rugby] for the first time," says Bruce Bayes of Custom Mobility, Largo, Fla., "you'd be, well, shocked would be putting it mildly."

Actually, the Canadian inventors of the game originally called it murder ball.

"But that was a little hard to sell to rehab," says Terry Vinyard, sports coordinator at Tampa General Rehabilitation in Florida and director of the national championship team. "It's a take-no-prisoners kind of game. They talk smack, get on the refs. It's amazing to watch. But when you think about it, a lot of people with these types of injuries were risk-takers."

Wheelchairs now are adapted for golf, basketball, tennis, hockey, bowling and track events such as shot put and javelin throw. There are handcycles and seating systems attached to water skis and snow skis. With modern technology and a little imagination, try to find the boundaries.

OK, money is a boundary. Sport-specific chairs are priced anywhere from $1,000 to $3,500 apiece, and reimbursement is always tricky.

"It's a double-edged sword," Bayes says. "As the chairs become more specialized for each sport, they become more expensive, and who's going to pay for it? Jogging opened the exercise door to the able-bodied because anybody could do it. We need easy entry for the disabled."

A Universal Sporting Mentality IT WOULDN'T HURT IF insurance companies and managed care systems better understood that exercise is a positive medically, Bayes says, and that equipment for exercise should be funded.

According to a 1997 industry survey by New York-based Theta Reports, clinicians and physical therapists are increasingly recommending sports chairs over conventional chairs even as first chairs when a patient leaves the hospital. They take a long-term view stressing flexibility for patients who might want to participate in sports once they are physically capable, but who would not want to purchase another chair to do so.

Manufacturers and wheelchair athletes alike are hoping that becomes a trend, as it fits nicely with the mindset of the disabled as a part of mainstream America, not apart from it.

The sports chair is designed primarily for function and flexibility, but its traits have made a big impact on the wheelchair market at large, manufacturers say. Comfort has become more important, as has color choice. Neon-colored chairs aren't just for athletes anymore.

For all of those reasons, manufacturers place an inordinate emphasis on the sports chair, given the fact it represents only a sliver of the wheelchair market. Domestic wheelchair sales reached $585 million in 1997 and $615 million in 1998, according to industry analyst Frost & Sullivan, Mountain View, Calif. But the sports chair segment accounted for only 5 percent or less of overall sales, industry sources say, putting sales at an estimated $30 million.

Sizing Up the Benefits "FOR US, IT DOESN'T MAKE business sense," says Diego Picchetti, vice president of marketing for St. Louis-based Everest & Jennings, a division of Graham-Field, which makes an off-road wheelchair but no sports-specific chairs. "We couldn't come to terms with the return on investment. The return is intangible-goodwill and brand recognition. We couldn't justify the resources we'd need to devote."

Colours by Permobil, the Anaheim, Calif., branch of Swedish-based Permobil, produces 11 wheelchair models, six of them sports chairs. Yet only 15 percent of its sales come from sports chairs, Champa says. Why the skewed emphasis?

"It's promotional. Sports chairs might not account for a lot of sports chair sales, because so few handicapped people are really involved in competitive sports," Champa says. "But the sports chairs create a large awareness of the brand that translates to sales of everyday chairs. There's an image and product awareness that comes from the sports chair. The image opens the door."

The desired result, say providers, is that some users of everyday chairs identify with the sports chair even if they are not specifically looking for one. And image is only part of the sales pitch.

"Technological changes have made the lightweight sports chair work as well in the everyday world," says Darren Hulbert of Designing Mobility, Cerritos, Calif. "With Colours' Zephyr chair, the lines are blurred between sports and everyday. That's a sports chair used by a lot of people like an everyday chair."

Eagle Sportschairs, Snellville, Ga., offers a dissenting opinion. Its line isn't a promotional tool, because sports chairs are all it makes. The company was founded 17 years ago by Barry Ewing and he still owns it. Every chair is completely customized.

"Business is booming," says Bernice Ewing, Barry's wife and Eagle's marketing director. "We're not in it for a promotional tool or medicine. We're in the sports business, pure and simple. We have been on the cutting edge for almost 20 years and the big companies follow us."

She says the trend is for large companies to mass-produce sports chairs, making her company's selling point of customization stand out even more. She also rejects speculation that the sports chair market is shrinking.

"I predict it's growing," she says. "I see programs starting to bring wheelchairs into schools so every kid wanting to compete in sports and needing a wheelchair will have one available. That's the trend I see."

Celebrity Promotion Commotion LIKE SO MANY MAINSTREAM PRODUCTS, sports chair marketing strategies also utilize the celebrity endorser. Be it large manufacturer or small, each company sponsors world-class athletes or entire teams. Sunrise, for example, helped underwrite the high-profile 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games and will be involved in the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia.

Elite competitors attract media attention, whether it's Nike and Michael Jordan or Sunrise and Martinson. Media attention leads to exposure, which leads to brand identification, which leads to sales.

So manufacturers support the products and the competitors who use them. Sunrise sponsors the 21-member Team Quickie, featuring basketball superstar David Kiley and top-ranked tennis player David Hall. Invacare's 75-member Team Action includes tennis and basketball expert Stephen Welch and racer Scott Hollenbeck, who recently jumped from Team Quickie. Eagle Sportschairs sponsors the 75-member Team Eagle.

TiSport, Kennewick, Wash., sponsors a five-person racing team. A spinoff of Titanium Sports Technologies, it makes all five of its sports wheelchairs out of the same titanium used in bicycle and motorcycle frames and golf club shafts.

TiSport claims titanium is 45 percent lighter than steel and three times stronger than aluminum, with superior dampening characteristics for smoother response. The company was founded in 1988 by Jim Knaub, a gymnastics and track athlete who became a paraplegic in a 1978 motorcycle accident and has gone on to win the Boston Marathon five times.

"We see ourselves as a company between the large manufacturers and the garage-based business," says Knaub. "Our design and marketing philosophy evolved from a sports mindset. We're about performance, and that equates to everyday life."

With strong, yet lightweight, materials in use now for several years, the newest advances in construction have focused on user comfort. Sunrise has adapted the RockShox bicycle shock-absorber system to its sports line.

"The goal is to get suspension systems like these prescribed by doctors as a condition of medical necessity," says Kevan Chu, an applications engineer for San Jose, Calif.-based RockShox. "I feel that every wheelchair will some day have these shock absorbers."

Elyria, Ohio-based Invacare has unveiled a prototype suspension system also designed to absorb bumps. "Addressing comfort seems to be the next trend," says Susan Elder, marketing director at Invacare, which produces the Action Top End line of sports chairs.

While their motivation might vary, both the big and small manufacturers appear committed to keeping the sports chair industry developing better products accessible to more users.

"We need to keep pushing. Expand the market and prices will come down," says Marilyn Hamilton, a Sunrise vice president and industry trailblazer who was paralyzed in a 1979 hang-gliding accident. With partners Jim Okamoto and Don Helman, Hamilton went on to adapt hang-glider technology to develop the innovative Quickie chairs.

"This isn't just about selling sports chairs," Hamilton says. "The goal is to bring the disabled into mainstream society, break the stereotypes and myths that disabled people cannot perform at the highest levels. It's a celebration of life and human achievement."

Fellow pioneer and Sunrise executive Martinson can relate to that. He is credited with drawing the initial sketches of the monoski on a napkin while sitting in a ski lodge. It went into production in 1987 and today, he says, he can ski any run on Crystal Mountain near Seattle with it.

His sights now are set on a makeshift windsurfing board and a breathtakingly beautiful portion of the Columbia River Gorge outside Portland, Ore., that has his name on it.

"You dream about it, then you do it," he says. "I think I can get a used windsurfer, attach a pivotal seating system and a pulley system for the sails. I've been thinking about it for a couple years. I think it can be done."

You tell him it can't.

THE EMERGENCE OF a professional sports endorsement staple-the signature model-is an indisputable sign of the sports wheelchair market coming of age.

Sunrise Medical's Quickie line has slapped legendary wheelchair basketball figure David Kiley's name on a new all-court chair, making him the industry's marketing answer to Michael Jordan.

"Minus many of the zeroes," Kiley points out.

Maybe he should have had Jordan's superagent, David Falk, negotiate his Quickie deal. Instead, Kiley hammered out the terms with the company that has sponsored him the last 15 years.

He and company officials declined to discuss financial details. However, Sunrise officials, while not releasing specific sales figures, said response has been "overwhelming" since the chair's debut in November 1998 at Medtrade.

The chair, with a suggested retail price of $2,295, is an all-court version with an anti-tip coaster fifth wheel. It can be adapted to tennis and quad rugby, but is particularly suited for basketball.

Kiley, 45, serves a unique multiple role. Off the court, he is commissioner of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. On the court last year, he was captain and a reserve member of the U.S. world champion wheelchair basketball team.

Kiley suffered a spine injury at 19 when he crashed into a tree sliding down a ski slope on an inner tube. He went on to become an elite wheelchair athlete in skiing, track and tennis, as well as basketball.-K.G.