The day Jessica Long made her Paralympic debut in September 2004, the American was just 12 years old. The scene was set in Athens, Greece, the birthplace of the Olympic Games. The teenager had only started swimming two years earlier, but she already had a mission in mind. “A lot of people didn’t understand how amazing the Paralympic Games were., said the athlete during a press conference the day after the opening ceremony of his sixth Games, on August 29 in Paris. I remember telling myself that I was going to change that and that I was going to try, in my own way, to help the Paralympic movement grow. »
Twenty years later, Jessica Long has become an iconic figure. On Wednesday, September 4, at the Paris La Défense Arena, the 32-year-old athlete won her 30thmy medal, the 17thmy in gold, over 400 m freestyle in the S8 category, intended for swimmers with a severe disability of the lower or upper limbs. With a time of 4 min 48 s 74, she beat the British Alice Tai (4 min 52 s 24) and the Italian Xenia Francesca Palazzo (5 min 00 s 13).
“I’ve never been good at listening to people. I always feel like they’re telling me what I can’t do.” (…), She relates in her autobiography, Unsinkable (“Unsinkable”, Harper Collins editions, not translated), published in 2018. I want to hear what I “can” do. »
In February 2021, during the Super Bowl, the final of the American football championship, her fellow citizens (re)discovered her story in an advertisement broadcast by one of her – numerous – sponsors. Born in Eastern Siberia (Russia) with fibular hemimelia, a congenital malformation that deprives her of a fibula, she was abandoned by her young parents. An American couple from Maryland adopted her at the age of 13 months, after a year in an orphanage. Tatiana Kirillova becomes Jessica Long. After twenty-five operations, the little girl finally had both legs amputated, when she was one and a half years old.
“The icing on the cake”
In the water, the swimmer finds it impossible to push off the wall. So, to compensate, she puts “A lot of pressure and rotation on his arms.” The American has always shown a determined face. As proof, he cites a family anecdote that dates back to the American selections for the Athens Games. “My father was preparing me for the possibility that I might not qualify. He told me that I was young (…)that I would have plenty of time to train for the next Games, she reveals in her book. I was 12 years old, I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “I’m going to make the team. I know I’ll get there.” And sure enough, they called me up. » She becomes the youngest athlete ever to make the U.S. Paralympic Team, across all sports.
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