A woman who lost a leg last year in a shark attack won a silver medal in the 2024 Paralympics in Paris.
Ali Truwit, a Connecticut native, took home the silver medal Thursday in the women’s swimming 400-meter freestyle.
Just one year ago, in May 2023, Truwit was on a post-college graduation vacation with her best friend in Turks and Caicos in when she was attacked by a shark.
“The 1st time I got back in [the water] was in July, a year ago,” Ali Truwit told “Good Morning America” in August, ahead of the Paralympics. “I got back in with a floaty around my stomach because we weren’t sure how I was going to respond in the water again, and now I’m headed to the Paralympics.”
She added, “To represent my country is just an incredible kind of journey that makes me feel proud and also really grateful.”
Truwit said she and her friend were out in the ocean snorkeling when a shark appeared “seemingly out of nowhere” and started to attack them.
“We fought back, but pretty quickly the shark had my leg in its mouth, and the next thing I knew, it had bitten off my foot and part of my leg,” she said.
Truwit said she and her friend had to swim roughly 75 yards back to the snorkeling boat.
Once on the boat, Truwit said her friend tied a tourniquet on her leg to stop the bleeding. Truwit was eventually airlifted to a hospital in Miami, where she underwent two lifesaving surgeries.
She was later transported to a hospital in New York to be closer to her family and friends at home, where she underwent a trans-tibial amputation on her left leg.
The surgery took place on May 31, 2023, Truwit’s 23rd birthday.
“Very dark days,” she recounted of that time in her life. “But I am alive, and that’s what I try to focus on and kind of just live the life that I’ve been given again to the fullest.”
Adapting to a new normal
After her amputation, a prosthetic leg helped provide Truwit with better mobility, although she said she still faced challenges adapting to her new normal.
“I’m relearning life without an ankle,” she explained. “I have to learn how to sit again and stand again, and walk again, and run, and how to do stairs and the everyday challenges.”
Truwit said she also faced pain in her leg, as well as the risk of infection, and struggled emotionally in addition to the physical limitations.
“There are a lot of challenges for me with body image … learning to love my new body and accept it and learn that it’s beautiful in its own right,” she said. “And I think that’s been something that’s been so huge for me.”
Truwit described her recovery process as a “very long and bumpy road of ups and downs.”
