A year after the shark attack, Ali Truwit will swim in the Paralympic Games

A year ago, Ali Truwit never thought she would compete in the Paris Paralympic Games in 2024.

On May 24, 2023 — two days after the Connecticut native graduated from Yale University, where she had had a successful swimming career — she experienced a tragedy that she described to Kelly Clarkson in February as “everyone’s worst nightmare.”

She was snorkeling off the coast of Turks and Caicos with her friend and former Yale teammate Sophie Pilkinton when a “huge shark came out of nowhere and started fighting us,” she told Clarkson.

Truwit said she and Pilkinton “fought back,” but before she knew it, the shark “bit off my foot and part of my leg.”

“My first thought was: ‘Am I crazy or do I have no foot?’” Truwit added in an interview with CBS and The Associated Press. “It was a very difficult image for me. But you immediately take action.”

As the shark circled, Truwit and Pilkinton began swimming as fast as they could toward the boat, 75 yards away. Once on board, Pilkinton applied a tourniquet to Truwit’s leg, slowing the bleeding.

“Swimming is the first thing that saved my life, and the second was my teammate Sophie,” Truwit told Clarkson. “I am forever indebted to her.”

Truwit was airlifted to a hospital in Miami, where a team of trauma doctors “continued to save my life,” she told Clarkson.

“I had surgeries to fight infections, I had blood transfusions and it ended with an amputation on my 23rd birthday,” Truwit told Clarkson.

“I’m a lifelong athlete,” Truwit told Clarkson. “Ten days before the attack, I had run a marathon with my mother and I was sitting there thinking, ‘Am I ever going to run again? Will I ever be able to be an athlete again?’”

Truwit told CBS and AP that when she first started rehabilitation, she wondered why this terrible thing had happened to her. But after a while, she said, she thought, “Why don’t we throw it all into something?”

She said her mindset completely changed when she decided to get back in the pool.

“I didn’t want to lose a limb, and also my love for the water,” she told CBS and AP.

“I was just really curious to see how I would feel about being back on the pool deck and back in a competitive space,” Truwit told the news media. “The more I worked on it, the flashbacks decreased and the pain became less.”

Shortly after she made her decision, her prosthetist told her to talk to another of his patients, Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long.. Long has had a highly decorated Paralympic career: 29 medals, including 16 gold medals.

Under Long’s mentorship, Truwit decided she wanted to try competing in the Paralympic Games. And while she had plenty of time to perfect her swimming skills for the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles, she decided to give the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games a shot.

“I’m not one to wait,” she told CBS and AP.

Her resilience paid off late last year. She successfully competed in the National Swimming Trials and the Paralympic Swimming Trials, qualifying with a time of 1:08.98, NBC News reported.

Now, 15 months after the attack, Truwit heads to Paris, where she will compete in the 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle and the 100-meter backstroke at the Paralympic Games, which start Wednesday.

“A year ago I was just getting back into the water,” Truwit told CBS and AP. “I go back into the water now, and that feeling of joy comes back and the smile comes back. Having that again is something I am so grateful for. Honestly, it’s one of the proudest moments in my swimming career because I know how much work it took.”

She added to NBC News that even though she now has a disability, she is really no different than anyone else.

“I am unique because I was attacked by a shark, but I am not unique because we all experience hardships, trauma and difficult times in life,” Truwit said. “We all have the ability to get back up.”