Paralympic Games: Swimming against trauma

Alexandra Truwit has a warning for all adolescents who don’t feel like taking swimming lessons at school: “Swimming definitely saved my life,” says the 24-year-old with her eyes wide open. She swam at a competitive level for 15 years before she had to apply everything she had learned in countless training sessions on one day in May 2023. After all, she was up against a shark. And in the end, I swam away without a foot but with my life.

Alexandra Truwit is undoubtedly one of the most dazzling personalities at the Paralympic Games in Paris. On Sunday morning, however, it wasn’t enough for the swimmer to advance in the first round of the 100 meter freestyle. On September 5th and 6th she will start again in the 400 meter freestyle and 100 meter backstroke. Her incredible story is likely to be told several more times in the coming days.

Alexandra Truwit herself told the US media this way: “Two days after we graduated from college, I went on a snorkeling trip with one of my best friends.” They traveled to the Turks and Caicos Islands near the Bahamas to see the breathtaking Experience nature above and below water. That’s where it happened: “Out of nowhere a shark came towards us, rammed us, attacked us.”

The two friends fought back with all their might. »We fought back. But pretty quickly my leg was in his mouth,” Truwit remembers. “The next thing I remember was that my foot and part of my leg were bitten off.” The survivor has recorded the distance that Alexandra Truwit and her friend and fellow swimmer Sophie Pilkinton had to swim in the ocean to their boat around 25, sometimes estimated at a good 80 meters.

What seems clear is that it took a considerable distance to swim away from a shark. “I had to use everything I had learned to my advantage, in a situation in which I actually had no advantage.” Because the young woman, who had just completed her studies in cognitive science and economics, was completely exhausted in those moments consciously: »I no longer had a foot and was bleeding badly. The shark was still circling around us.”

The two made it onto their boat. Sophie Pilkinton tied her friend’s leg so Truwitt wouldn’t lose more blood. Alexandra Truwit spent the time afterwards in the hospital. But coming to terms with trauma soon followed. “It was then difficult for me to even hear the sounds of water and not be immediately thrown back into the moments of that shark attack.”

Hardly any other species of sea creature arouses as much fascination, but also as much fear, in people as sharks. They are considered elegant and beautiful, but also dangerous. Images from successful films such as “Jaws” or “The Beach”, in which a shark attacks people swimming close to the surface of the water, with its dorsal fin visible in the air, have become imprinted in the collective memory. Countless other stories, cartoons and caricatures adapt such images.

In reality, shark attacks are rare. The Florida Museum of Natural History, which keeps statistics on this, reports 120 interactions between people and sharks worldwide in 2023, in 91 cases the shark bit – 42 percent of which affected people who were surfing, snorkeling or doing other water sports. In addition, bites usually occur when people invade the sharks’ natural habitat.

In 2023, 14 people worldwide will have died as a result of the interactions, and significantly more will be injured for life. Alexandra Truwit is one of those who didn’t want to be set back. Three months after the traumatizing encounter in the ocean, she was back in the water, albeit in a swimming pool, and began training. »I wanted to fight for everything I could get back. My love for the water was part of it.” In 2024 she took part in the Para Swimming European Open Championships in Funchal, Portugal, and came second in the 400 meter freestyle.

On the way to a new life, it also helped to talk to people who could give advice. Truwit’s prosthetic maker made contact with para-swimmer, multiple medalist and author Jessica Long. The two became friends. “Her self-confidence and the way she proudly shows off her prosthesis outside the pelvis gave me strength to accept myself,” says Truwit. “I’m lucky to have her in my life.”

32-year-old Jessica Long is also competing in Paris these days. But she is not a direct competitor of Alexandra Truwit. Long swims in the S8 category, which is intended for more mild impairments such as a lack of comprehensive muscle strength. Truwit, on the other hand, belongs to the S10 category, where people with limited mobility in the hips or lower leg areas or those with a foot amputation take part.