Ageless wonders and a high school science teacher: 10 US Paralympians to watch

Three years ago, the United States sent 235 athletes to the Tokyo Paralympics and won 104 medals.

Some of these athletes were born with physical challenges, while others suffered devastating injuries from accidents or assaults. Some have been Paralympians since just after the turn of the century.

Related: Paris Paralympics 2024: everything you should know about the Games

Here are 10 US athletes to watch in Paris, starting with a Big Three – athletes who have combined for dozens of Paralympic medals, all of whom were born in the former Soviet Union and adopted by US parents who were able to get them the medical treatments they needed to survive and thrive.

Jessica Long, swimming

The most decorated person on the US Paralympic roster has simply staggering numbers.

Since debuting in 2004 at age 12, winning 100m freestyle gold in her first Paralympic final, the 32-year-old swimmer has won 29 Paralympic medals (16 gold) and 37 world championships. She helped bring Paralympic sports into mainstream sports culture, winning four ESPY awards and becoming a familiar face in US TV advertising, including an emotional commercial telling the story of her adoption that ran during the Super Bowl in 2021. She was also the first Paralympian to win the Sullivan Award, given to the USA’s top amateur athlete.

Long was born with fibular hemimelia, a condition that left her without several bones in her lower legs. She had both legs amputated below the knee when she was 18 months old, soon after she was adopted from a Russian orphanage.

Oksana Masters, cycling

Born with multiple birth defects resulting from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Masters was adopted at age 7 and had both legs amputated by age 14.

Since then, she has been to six Paralympics in four different sports and won 17 medals, including seven gold.

She debuted in rowing in 2012 with a bronze medal, then started her cross-country skiing and biathlon Paralympic career with two cross-country medals in 2014. She upgraded in 2018 and won her first two Paralympic gold medals.

Due to back issues, she changed her summer sport to hand-cycling and won her next two gold medals in Tokyo – the time trial and the road race. She returned to the snow in 2022 to win two biathlon gold medals and a cross-country relay gold, then won her first two cycling world championships that summer. She has since won another cycling world championship and two more in winter sports for a career total of 16.

Masters’ longtime boyfriend, Aaron Pike, is a cross-country skier and long-distance track athlete also bound for his seventh Paralympics – three winter and now four summer.

Tatyana McFadden, track and field

Name a distance, and the 35-year-old McFadden has found success in it.

In addition to her 20 Paralympic medals (eight gold), the Leningrad-born wheelchair racer has won the Boston Marathon five times, the New York City Marathon five times, the London Marathon four times, and the Chicago Marathon a staggering nine times.

But she’s hardly a distance specialist. She has won gold medals in races as short as 400m and took gold in the mixed 4×100 meters in Tokyo. She also has individual medals in each distance all the way down to 100m.

She also took up cross-country skiing and competed in the country of her birth in 2014, taking silver in a sprint race and meeting her birth mother.

Tyler Merren, goalball

If the alternating pattern continues in his fifth Paralympics, Merren and his goalball teammates will take gold this year. The USA took bronze in 2004 and fourth in 2008. After not qualifying in 2012, Merren and the US men returned to take silver in 2016, then fourth in Tokyo.

Merren hasn’t slowed down at all, leading the team with 21 goals in the 2022 world championships, when the men missed the knockout rounds.

Ian Seidenfeld, table tennis

Prior to the Tokyo Games, no US man had won Paralympic table tennis gold since Tahl Leibovitz did it in 1996. Seidenfeld, who has dwarfism, broke that drought with a win over defending champion Peter Rosenmeier of Denmark.

Leibovitz is still on the team, making his seventh trip to the Games at age 49.

Becca Murray, wheelchair basketball

The Wisconsin native debuted in the Paralympics at age 18, winning gold in Beijing.

By the time the Rio Paralympics rolled around, Murray was a dominant force. She led all scorers in the Games, averaging 24.1 points per game, more than five points ahead of any other player. In the final against Germany, which the USA won 62-45, she scored 33 points.

But in 2020, when the Tokyo Games were postponed, she turned a short break into a full-fledged retirement. She was not on the team that took bronze in Tokyo the next year.

Retirement didn’t last long. She returned to join the US squad in the 2023 world championships and was a solid contributor on another bronze-medal team.

This year’s US team is loaded with experience – only one of the team’s 12 players is making her Paralympic debut.

Chuck Aoki, wheelchair rugby

While pursuing his PhD in comparative politics and international relations, the wheelchair rugby veteran has maintained his pursuit of an elusive Paralympic gold medal.

The US team won gold in Aoki’s first world championship appearance in 2010. Since then, the USA have medaled in every world championship and Paralympics but have not yet reclaimed gold.

In Rio, the USA took Australia to overtime but lost 59-58. In Tokyo, Great Britain pulled away in the last four minutes to take a 54-49 win. In the 2022 World Championship, Australia again denied the USA.

After carrying the US flag in the opening ceremony in Tokyo, Aoki led the team in scoring with 21.8 tries per game, sixth among all players in the Paralympics.

Kendall Gretsch, triathlon

Gretsch will have a hard time topping what she did in the PTWC (wheelchair athletes) race in Tokyo, passing Australia’s Lauren Parker in the last few meters to take gold. The event has a staggered start based on athlete classification, which means Gretsch spent the whole race chipping away at Parker’s lead before finally moving into sight on the last wheelchair lap.

The three-sport athlete also has three gold medals in the 2018 and 2022 Winter Paralympics in cross-country skiing and biathlon, along with 17 world championships split between her summer and winter sports.

Katie Holloway Bridge, sitting volleyball

Eleven of the 12 members of the US women’s sitting volleyball team have won Paralympic gold, either in Tokyo, Rio or both.

Holloway Bridge was the tournament MVP in Tokyo, recording 54 points (36 attacks, 17 blocks and an ace), including a stunning 20-point performance in the gold-medal match against China.

She also played college basketball for Cal State Northridge with a prosthetic leg, ending her career firmly ensconced among the school’s all-time leaders in blocked shots (second) and rebounds (sixth).

Noah Malone, track and field

Like Holloway Bridge, Malone had a successful career in able-bodied college sports. He set two para world records in the T12 (visually impaired) class while helping Indiana State’s able-bodied track and field team win the 2022 Missouri Valley Conference meet.

In Tokyo, he took gold in the 4x100m mixed relay and silver in the 100m and 400m T12 (visual impairment). He added a world championship in the 100m in 2023.

Six more ones to watch

• Matt Stutzman, who has gained fame as the pioneering ‘Armless Archer’ and once set a world record for the longest shot to hit a target, is the only archer on the team with a Paralympic medal.

• Eric Bennett, bound for his fifth Paralympics, is a high school science teacher who’ll be hoping to match the Paris archery success of one of his former students – Brady Ellison, who took individual silver and mixed team bronze in the Olympics.

• Roxie Trunnell became the first Paralympic equestrian champion from the US in Tokyo. She teamed with Rebecca Hart and Kate Shoemaker, both of whom also return this year, for bronze in the team event.

• Travis Gaertner makes his Paralympic cycling debut 20 years after winning the second of his two Paralympic gold medals in a different sport (wheelchair basketball) with a different country (Canada) in a different era (2000 and 2004).

• Hunter Woodhall has three Paralympic track and field medals and six medals from world championship competition, including two silver medals this year. He has already made an impression this year in Paris cheering for his wife, Tara Davis-Woodhall, who won gold in the Olympic long jump.

• Sarah Adam, a faculty member at St Louis University, is the first woman named to a US Paralympic roster in the open-gender sport of wheelchair rugby. She was on the team that took silver at the world championships in 2022.