Swimming saved Alexandra Truwit’s life twice. Literally, at the beginning. On May 24, 2023, the American student was snorkelling in the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeast of the Bahamas, to celebrate her science degree obtained two days earlier. Suddenly, a shark attacks her and rips off her left foot, in front of one of her friends.
Despite bleeding, Ali Truwit, a swimmer from Yale University (Connecticut) team, managed to swim about 100 meters to return to the boat in open sea. “Without the training, I’m not sure we would have been able to do it”the young woman explained in May to the website Usparaswimming.
She was flown to a hospital in Miami, Florida, where she underwent two operations to neutralize the infections, before being repatriated to a facility in New York. When she turned twenty-three, her knee was amputated. “There followed many tears, pain and devastation. In the hospital, very heavy questions ran through my head.”, Ali Truwit said in February on a talk show broadcast by NBC. Ten days before the accident, the American had just completed a marathon: “Will I ever be able to run again? Will I ever be able to be an athlete again?”
Very quickly, his optimistic nature takes over. Swimming, once again, will be his salvation. “There are things I lost that I will never get back, that is my reality now. But what I can get back, I will fight tooth and nail to achieve it. I always loved swimming and I was determined not to lose that love for swimming.”says the athlete.
First competition three months after the accident
The Paralympic Games are fourteen months away. They will serve as her compass, as she is determined to try to qualify. She started her transition from swimming to para swimming. All the movements she used to do with two legs, standing on the starting block, pushing off the wall… she now has to learn to do them with just one. To compensate for the imbalance in her lower body, she also has to change her breathing rate, as well as the position of her head and hips.
Three months after the attack, Ali Truwit competed in her first competition. Then, in December 2023, she competed in the USA Para Swimming National Championships and won a silver medal. Her prosthetist put her in touch with another of her patients, swimmer Jessica Long.
Across the Atlantic, Jessica Long is an iconic figure at the Paralympic Games. In Paris, the 32-year-old athlete is taking part in her… sixth Games. The first time she was only 12 years old, she was an outsider. An outsider, the teenager returned from Athens in 2004 with three gold medals. Twenty years later, her collection includes twenty-nine (sixteen of which are gold). “It’s one thing to be at the top, but I’ve worked very hard to stay there for so long.”, She insisted to the AP news agency at the end of June, during the American selections. Born in eastern Siberia with a congenital malformation and then abandoned by her parents, she was adopted by an American couple from Maryland. After twenty-five operations, both her legs were finally amputated at the age of 18 months.
“Her self-confidence and the way she proudly shows off her prosthetics outside the pool gave me the strength to accept myself better. She is so strong, so fast.”praises Ali Truwit. Like her eldest, she has validated her ticket for Paris 2024. In the pool of the Arena Paris La Défense, the 24-year-old swimmer will line up, from 1Ahem September, in 100m freestyle, 400m and 100m backstroke. Jessica Long plans “withdraw slowly” after the Los Angeles Games in 2028.
