The inaugural winner of the Best Athlete with a Disability ESPY Award at the 2002 edition was mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer who suffers from a total visual impairment and he became the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest in May 2001. He is one of three people to have won the award during its three-year history; sprinter Marlon Shirley won the accolade at the 2003 ceremony for becoming the first amputee in history to set a time below eleven seconds in the men's 100 metres at the Utah Summer Games, and Kyle Maynard was voted the winner of the award in the 2004 iteration because of his strong form in freestyle wrestling in high school despite being born with congenital amputation that resulted in the shortening of all his limbs. The Best Athlete with a Disability ESPY Award was discontinued and bifurcated by gender in 2005 to establish the Best Male Athlete with a Disability ESPY Award and the Best Female Athlete with a Disability ESPY Award.