While We’re Young (Ideas) | On the Paris ’24 Paralympics
By TERRY LYONS, Editor-in-Chief, Digital Sports Desk
BOSTON – On August 10th, this column stated: “fighting against every ounce of common sense in my mind and keeping to an iron-clad rule of never, ever stating that the most recent occurrence is the “best,” there’s a constant thought and growing conviction to call the 2024 Paris Summer Games the very best of my lifetime.”
It turned out to be a true statement of – not just opinion – but fact. The 2024 Olympics (July 26 – August 11) were tremendous. Paris is going to be very tough to beat and that’s because it’s a gift that kept on giving. The ‘24 Paralympics (August 28 – September 8) came to a close with the same joy and sense of accomplishment as its big brother.
There were approximately 4,400 athletes competing in the Paralympics, hailing from 168 delegations and a few Neutral Paralympic Athletes (NPA) (88 from Russia and 8 from Belarus) to round-out the competition. That means there were 4,400 amazing stories to be told from the Paralympics alone.
Here’s just one.
Ali Truwit grew up in bucolic Darien, Connecticut where she swam on her local swim club and was good enough to follow in the freestyle and backstrokes of her mother and uncle who each swam for Yale’s swimming team, an accomplished team in the IVY League.
Truwit worked and planned and dreamt of studying for her MBA at Harvard Business School as she worked a summer job at McKinsey & Company. She even ran a marathon. Her affluent upbringing allowed for family vacations and trips to Caribbean hot spots like Turks & Caicos where she swam and snorkeled near the pristine, crystal blue shoreline and beautiful, sandy beaches.
In late May of 2023, Truwit and her friend, Sophie Pilkinton, a 2019 Yale grad, went swimming and snorkeling off a local boat at a Turks and Caicos beach area Truwit knew quite well. As they were swimming, a shark came upon them.
“Sophie saw it before I did,” said Truwit to Yale Alumni Magazine, “and it came from behind, and then up next to us. The next thing I knew, it was underneath us. Pretty quickly, it had my leg in its mouth,” she said.
“I remember thinking in my head, am I crazy, or do I not have my foot right now? And I turned around to see,” Truwit remembers. “That was really one of the hardest images that stuck with me for a long time, just seeing my footless leg bleeding in the clear blue water.”
Pilkinton, a medical school grad, wrapped a tourniquet around Truwit’s leg to help limit the flow of blood. The injury was, quite obviously, very serious and, eventually, Truwit required a medevac flight to a Miami hospital.
As Yale Magazine wrote: “On her 23rd birthday, eight days after the attack, a portion of her leg was amputated so that she could, some time down the road, wear a prosthetic. This was the new reality.
“When the texts began to fly and news about Truwit’s attack spread through the Yale swimming community, support poured in. Truwit’s mother’s teammates took turns sending her flowers every week. Her former Yale teammate Duncan Lee ’20, now working at MIT with a noted prosthetist, got in touch about how to start the journey to using a prosthetic. When Truwit was being moved into her parents’ first-floor guest bedroom to recover, another teammate decorated the place with photographs from Yale swimmers and other friends, to make it feel welcoming and warm.”
The story does not end there as it must weave it way to Paris and the Summer of ‘24.
In October 2023, Truwit began to train 90 minutes a day, four days a week with a goal to attend a meet in December staged by USA Paralympics Swimming. After two months of training, she went to the US Paralympics Swimming Nationals meet and swam well.
Training for the ‘24 Paralympics meant competing at swim meets on a regular basis and all over the USA. Truwit swam and competed alongside athletes whose achievements bolstered her confidence. “It was so huge for me to be able to see all of these incredible athletes just conquering obstacles and doing incredible things in the water,” Truwit told Yale Magazine. “I think it just gave me so much hope and so much strength for my own journey.”
In June, Truwit headed to Minneapolis and qualified for the Paris games, just over a year after she was attacked. The only setback came when her meets were televised and she caught a glimpse of the mobile camera on a track at poolside. To say the least, it spooked her.
To combat that fear, Truwit had to swim faster and faster to gain a starting block in the center of the pool rather than the outside lanes. She succeeded once again, and in the ‘You can’t make this up’ category of sport, Truwit swam and earned a silver medal this past Thursday in the women’s 400-meter freestyle.
For everyone who witnessed the Olympics and Paralympics this summer, “We’ll always have Paris.”
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