American Paralympic swimmer Christie Raleigh Crossley poised an international listing in her Paralympics debut in Paris on Thursday.
The 37-year-old Tom’s River, Fresh Jersey local posted a 27.28-second hour within the 50-meter freestyle for the S9 elegance, which incorporates athletes with condition, limb loss or coordination difficulties, torching the former listing.
However nearest she went on social media.
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Crossley instructed journalists on Thursday that she had won a torrent of feedback and messages on social media that accused her of faking her incapacity.
“I went from enjoying a world record to being utterly devastated that the entire world seems to think I was a cheater and that I was somehow faking the hole in my brain and the cyst in my spinal cord,” she stated.
Crossley sustained a neck and again shock in 2007 later being crash by means of a under the influence of alcohol motive force, and nearest a mind shock in 2008 as a pedestrian in a hit-and-run, in step with her official Team USA profile. Next in 2018, she skilled paralysis on her left aspect because of the bleeding of a up to now unknown blood tumor in her mind.
She used to be up to now coaching to compete as an Olympic swimmer, however her accidents put that dream out of succeed in. She determined to pursue the 2024 Paralympics later staring at the Tokyo version in 2021. She joined para-swimming please see yr, and she or he claims that she has confronted questions on her incapacity ever since.
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Silver medallist Christie Raleigh-Crossley of Workforce United States reacts later the Girls’s 50m Freestyle S10 Ultimate on hour some of the Paris 2024 Summer season Paralympic Video games at Paris L. a. Protection Enviornment on August 29, 2024, in Nanterre, France. (Adam Nice-looking/Getty Pictures)
“To be told online by all of these bullies that I am not somehow disabled as I appear, just because I can swim faster than them, it’s pretty devastating,” Crossley stated. “Because my family witnesses my disability every day and what it takes away from our family life, what it takes away from me as a human, as a woman, and it’s been pretty awful.”
Next environment the arena listing and turning back the athletes village, she had simply hours to arrange for the 50-meter freestyle ultimate in her elegance. The accusations and dislike feedback weighed on her, however she returned to L. a. Protection Enviornment that night time for a prospect at a medal. Crossley gained silver, simply in the back of China’s Chen Yi, who penniless the arena listing for the ladies’s 50-meter freestyle S10.
In a non-public essay posted to Nowadays.com on Friday, Crossley claimed that she didn’t even know she used to be eligible for the Paralympics previous to her choice to pursue it.
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Christie Raleigh-Crossley of Workforce United States competes within the Girls’s 50m Freestyle – S10 ultimate on hour some of the Paris 2024 Summer season Paralympic Video games at Paris L. a. Protection Enviornment on August 29, 2024, in Nanterre, France. (Ian MacNicol/Getty Pictures)
“I didn’t know that I was eligible for the Paralympics. I had no idea what the requirements were. It wasn’t that I was hesitant to get into Paralympic sports; I just wasn’t aware it was an option. It was a lack of knowledge, which I think is the case for many athletes who have sustained life-changing injuries,” she wrote.
Crossley additionally claims that she up to now didn’t wish to divulge how important her statuses in fact had been, however that they have got critically impacted her way of life.
“If I’m being honest, I also didn’t want to admit to the depth of my disability. I had muscle spasms and immobility on my left side, and I tried to hide it,” she wrote. “Although I’m in my wheelchair every day, sometimes I walk with forearm crutches if my muscles aren’t as spastic, but it still puts a heavy strain on my body.”
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