American swimmer Leanne Smith overcame what to many would have been impossible — winning Paralympic record gold just two years after suffering a partially collapsed lung.
The 36-year-old from Massachusetts won the women’s 100m Freestyle S3 Tuesday with a lightning fast record time of 1:28.81.
She was followed by Marta Fernández Infante of Spain, who won silver, and Rachael Watson of Australia, who won bronze.
After her victory, Smith called her win an "emotional" one.
“It’s been a rough two years, you know, and trying to regain the ability to walk, to eat, to talk even was such a struggle from a setback two years ago and it's been a dog fight day in and day out,” Smith said. “Making it to Paris was the first step, and then obviously just this moment was not even really in my brain. I dreamt it, and never lost hope of it but there’s always that little bit of doubt that creeps in. But I can’t believe that I was able to bounce back from everything and this time come home with a gold as well.”
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In 2022, Smith revealed on Instagram that on August 26 of that year she was rushed to the ER for difficulty breathing. She learned she had a partially collapsed lung and was admitted to the ICU.
“My body began to deteriorate quickly. My heart rate and blood pressure started to bottom out and still are. I was placed on bedrest. Atrophy set in fast, I lost the ability to breathe normally, talk, swallow, eat solids and control the muscles surrounding my left eye,” she wrote.
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She was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital where she received intensive therapy and re-learned how to speak, swallow and eat.
In spite of it all, she clung onto hope to regain her independent life and to return to the water, which she described as “the one place where I’m truly happy.”
After two years of therapy and determination, she was able to surpass her wildest dreams.
“I just think everyone goes through tough situations and hard things. And I’ve seen it from my teammates around, day in and day out, being in an in-patient rehabilitation setting where people’s lives are uprooted by accidents or acquiring different sorts of injuries. And you’re in these environments and you just look around and you know that people still have it way worse than you,” she explained.
Smith said through it all, she was “determined to defy the odds in that I will be successful even in spite of having a disability.”
“I want to prove to everyone out there that ever had any doubt that I would ever be able to contribute to anything in society and just be simply a person bound to a wheelchair, and I really just look to shatter that expectation every single day to show others that — don’t listen to them you can do it too, as long as you keep your mind on it,” Smith added.
Smith, who was diagnosed with dystonia, a rare neurological muscle disease, in January 2012 began swimming in 2013 as part of an aquatic rehabilitation session. She first competed in the Paralympic Games in Tokyo 2020, winning silver in the 100m Freestyle S3.
This round in Paris, in addition to her gold, she won silver for the 4 x 50m Freestyle Relay 20 Points — Mixed, and 9th in the 150m Individual Medley SM4, according to Team USA.
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