Truwit won two silver medals just over a year after having her leg bitten off by a shark. Photo: Instagram//Ali Truwit
Just 16 months after losing her leg in a shark attack, Ali Truwit won a pair of silver medals at the Paralympics.
Truwit placed second in the women’s S10 400-meter freestyle and Women’s 100-meter backstroke. She set an American record with a time of 4:31.39 in the freestyle event.
In 2023, just a few months before summer hit, Truwit was a Division 1 swimmer at Yale. During a trip to Turks and Caicos to celebrate her college graduation, she lost her left foot and part of her lower leg when a shark bit her.
Truwit was swimming off a boat with a friend when the attack occurred, and she credits her swimming talent with saving her life.
“We kicked and shoved back, but it bit through my foot and we had to swim 50 to 75 yards back to the boat to save ourselves,” she told U.S. Paralympics Swimming. “Without that training, I’m not sure we would have made it back to the boat in the open ocean. In a story where a really unlucky thing happened, there was a lot of luck in who was around me.”
At the boat, however, her injuries became apparent. Her friend tightened a tourniquet around her leg and Truwit was airlifted to a hospital in Miami, where she underwent emergency surgeries. She then was moved to New York, where doctors informed her they would need to remove her leg just below the knee. But even that enormous hurdle didn’t sway her passion for swimming, although she did struggle with the memory of those agonizingly long minutes when she was swimming back to the boat. And she still does.
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“Every day there is something new for me that I learn that kind of evokes a new memory from the attack. Because I was conscious the whole time,” she said. “Truthfully, at the start I thought it was going to be something where I overcame the fear and that was it. I have learned from this journey that that is not what this journey looks like. That there will be days it’s great and there will be days I have to fight to get that love back. But I would say I am at 9 out of 10 right now of really feeling comfortable and happy in the water and I am thankful to be there.”
Three months after her leg was amputated, she was back in the pool for her first para swimming meet at the Fred Lamback Georgia Para-Swimming Open. A few months after that, she medalled at the U.S. Para swimming nationals and began looking forward to the Paralympics.
Now, with two silver medals under her belt, she’s got a new outlook on life. “I would also say that when you’re truly faced with death and you understand what a second chance at life means,” she said, “you want to make the most of it. I’ve worked to do that and it has not been without an incredible, incredible support system.”
