Ariana Washington’s legs are long, muscular, and powerfully built. They’ve carried the 17-year-old Long Beach Poly senior a long way in a short amount of time, and this weekend in Clovis at the CIF State track meet, they may carry her into the history books.

Her younger brother Gabe is 9 years old, and his legs are the subjects of conversation too. They’ve been operated on, they’ve been fitted with serial casts to help straighten them as they grow, and they’ve been strapped into braces to help him stand for long periods of time.

Ariana is the two-time defending state champion in the 100 and 200 meter sprints, and could become the most decorated track athlete in Long Beach history this weekend and cement her place in California lore as the best since Marion Jones.

Gabe is a third-grader at Carver Elementary School who suffers from cerebral palsy and holds the honor of being his sister’s biggest fan. He’s also a big part of how she became the athlete and person that she is today.

Homecoming

Gabe was born just 29 weeks into his mother’s pregnancy and weighed less than 3 pounds. He required several blood transfusions and a two-month stay in the neonatal intensive care unit. In that time, he failed a vision test, and doctors told his mother that her son would be blind, even if he survived the NICU.

Euna Washington is an emergency room nurse at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, and she can spit out medical jargon faster than the writer’s for “Grey’s Anatomy.” She knows plenty of words that she hoped to never hear used to describe her son.

“They told me he’s going to be very sick, and he might die,” she remembers.

She says she was hopeful, but realistic about his chances at a normal life.

“When he was born, he didn’t even look like a baby,” she says. “He had all these tubes in him, and you couldn’t even see that he was a child.”

Her brow furrows for a moment, and then she breaks into a smile: “He’s my miracle baby.”

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As an impatient 8-year-old, all Ariana wanted was to hold her little brother. She was too young to understand what was going on.

“I was just upset that everyone got to meet him before me,” she says.

Gabe was born during flu season, a stretch of the calendar when children aren’t allowed into certain parts of the hospital, including the NICU. So Ariana had to wait for two months before she could even see her little brother.

“When he finally came home, he was so precious. He was only this big,” she says, holding her hands about 6 inches apart from each other.

“She took after him like she was his mother,” laughs Euna. “She would hold him, she’d change his diapers, she’d make his bottles for him. She’s always been very nurturing of him.”

A sister’s love

Over the intervening nine years, Gabe has beaten the terrifyingly long odds he was handed at birth. He’s a bright kid at the top of his class at Carver, and his legs are strong enough that he can jump and dance despite his condition. Last year he won silver in a Special Olympics race, but told his mother and friends that he’d won gold just like his sister.

It wasn’t an easy road to get from where he was to where he is now, and Ariana was a big part in helping him.

After a surgery last year to help lengthen a tendon in his right leg, he needed assistance getting up and down the stairs in the family’s two-story condo. His big sister was always willing to help.

“She’d carry me up the stairs, and help me with my math homework,” says Gabe, sounding a little embarrassed. “And she makes good pancakes, too.”

Ariana shrugs off the idea that she’s done something special in helping her mother with Gabe. “I don’t know, it’s normal to me because he’s my only little sibling,” she says. “When my mom is at work there’s some things he can’t do for himself, so I help him out.”

The biggest fan

Ariana is one of the few high school athletes who can legitimately claim a fan following. Nicknamed “The World’s Fastest Teenager” since the CIF State meet’s announcer referred to her as such two years ago, she signs autographs for little kids at track meets and has an “official” fan Instagram account that posts photos of her.

Of course, nobody thinks more of her than her little brother. He doesn’t get to attend many of her track meets because he’s in school and because they’re long and uncomfortable to attend, with hard metal bleachers. But the meets he does get to he always wears a black shirt with gold lettering that reads: “Ari’s Biggest Fan.”

“Everything he says starts with her name,” laughs Poly assistant coach Doc Moye. “’Ari says’ or ‘Ari this’ or ‘Ari that.’ ”

Having become something of an expert on superheroes, Gabe calmly explains that if Ariana was a superhero, she’d be the Flash. He even has a cape with the Flash’s logo on it. He spent a few years telling all of his friends that his big sister was faster than them and getting laughs in response — then suddenly she started showing up in the newspaper, and Gabe’s chest started puffing up.

“He always wants her to come to school so he can have her beat everybody in a race,” says Euna.

Of course, she’s won races against much stiffer competition. The last time she lost one was at the Youth World Championships in Ukraine last summer, when she took silver despite running on a partially torn groin muscle. Ariana credits her brother with helping her stay humble through her dizzyingly fast rise to elite status.

Staying grounded

The day Ariana burst onto the scene at the CIF State meet her sophomore season was also a hard day for her teammates. As a 15-year-old, she became the first 10th-grader to win state titles in the 100 and 200 sprints since Marion Jones had done it. But that day Poly also lost the state title, snapping the school’s state record streak of four consecutive team championships.

A difficult weekend bottomed out when Washington’s teammate Traci Hicks, a state champion hurdler who’s now at Arizona, crashed into a hurdle and ended up finishing last. Knowing that the team streak was coming to an end, Hicks broke down on the track. Ariana left the warm-up area (where she was getting ready for her own race) and sprinted across the field to pick Hicks up off the ground, and then walk her back to the team tent. Although she was three years younger than Hicks, it was a decidedly maternal gesture.

“That showed me something,” said Moye at the time. “That’s being a leader.”

Ariana maintains that there’s nothing special about her wanting to help her mom with Gabe, but she acknowledges that it’s given her a more mature perspective on life and helped teach her about the importance of being reliable.

With the unprecedented success she’s had, it would almost be understandable if she was cocky and aloof. But when she’s losing to Gabe on an XBOX 360 basketball video game for a third straight time, or goofing off with him playing the XBOX’s Just Dance game, it’s easy to understand why she’s not.

She may be internationally renowned as a sprinter, “but she’s just not that good at video games,” says Gabe apologetically.

Leaving home

It is clear that, for all their physical and mental gifts, the Washington family has not yet managed to come to terms with June 19. On that day, a little more than a week after graduating from Poly, Ariana will be moving to Oregon for a collegiate summer session. She’ll also run in the Junior World Championships again, and then transition right into her freshman year of college as a Duck, the new centerpiece sprinter for the nation’s best collegiate track program.

She’ll be leaving behind a school and a city of supporters, a mother who’s sacrificed time and money to help her, and of course, her little brother. She and Gabe share a bedroom and a bunk bed and have been roommates since he came home from the hospital.

When asked if he’s going to be sad after his sister leaves, Gabe shakes his head emphatically. “She could leave right now,” he says.

Ariana echoes his sentiment: Every time he does something to annoy her she frowns at him and says, “I can’t wait to leave you.”

Beneath their humor, though, is fear. Ariana has always been there to help Gabe, and he’s always been there to encourage her after a hard practice or an argument with someone at school.

Asked to really think about leaving her brother, it’s obvious that Ariana would prefer not to. She’s like many kids on the brink of leaving home — bristling, excited, the walls of her bedroom barely containing her. But when she thinks about not seeing Gabe, she turns serious.

“I’m going to cry at times,” she says. “I’m going to miss playing video games or watching movies together in my bed.

“I’m kind of scared to leave him alone,” she continues, choking up. “He’s going to have to battle through middle school and high school and everything. I don’t know. He’s not going to text me back fast enough.”

Given that she’s faster than anyone else in the world in her age group, few things happen fast enough for Ariana. The road has been slower for Gabe, but given how quick he is with technology and his schoolwork, Euna and Ariana are excited to see where it takes him.

“He’ll be the next Steve Jobs, watch,” says Ariana.

For now Gabe knows that he wants to go to Stanford Middle School, then Poly, then Oregon, just like his sister.

It may be hard for anyone to keep up with the World’s Fastest Teenager — but her biggest fan won’t ever be far behind.