Ali Truwit “swam for her life, and now she swam onto the podium,” an NBC announcer said just seconds after the women’s 400-meter free S10 final.
And honestly, we couldn’t have said it any better.
Truwit, who lost her leg during a shark attack last year, won silver in her debut at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games on Thursday, breaking an American record with her time of 4:31.39, NBC reports.
“It’s honestly a surreal moment right now, and I feel really, really grateful to contribute to Team USA’s medal count, because what I’ve achieved is on the shoulders of truly so much support from everyone around the country,” Truwit said after the race, per NBC Connecticut. “That’s what’s gotten me to where I am today.”
On May 24, 2023 — two days after Truwit graduated from Yale University, where she’d had a successful swimming career — she was snorkeling near Turks and Caicos with a former teammate when a shark attacked the two, biting off part of Truwit’s leg.
“My immediate thought was, ‘Am I crazy or do I not have a foot right now?’” Truwit said in an interview with CBS and The Associated Press. “It was a really hard image for me. But you move immediately into action.”
In an attempt to save her own life, the Connecticut native used her collegiate swimming skills and raced 75 yards to her boat, where a friend saved her life by applying a tourniquet to her leg.
Truwit was then airlifted to a hospital in Florida, where she eventually had to have her leg amputated on her 23rd birthday.
“I’m a lifelong athlete,” Truwit said on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in February. “Ten days before the attack, I had run a marathon with my mom, and I was sitting there thinking, like, ‘Am I ever going to run again? Am I ever going to be able to be an athlete again?’”
But things began to look up when Truwit’s prosthetist introduced her to another one of his patients, swimmer Jessica Long — a celebrated Paralympian who has more medals than Michael Phelps.
Truwit was initially going to try out for the 2028 Paralympics in Los Angeles, but thanks to Long’s support and a lot of hard work, she made it onto Team USA for the Paris Paralympics by the end of last year.
Her next race, the women’s 100-meter backstroke S10, is scheduled for Friday.
