Paralympics

Jessica Long

Raihaanah Aqilaputri, Naura Rizka, Raeshard Anwar

Jessica Long is a Russian-American Paralympic swimmer from Baltimore, Maryland and was born o February 29th 1992. She has held many world records and competed at five Paralympic Games, winning a total of 29 medals (16  of them gold). She has also won over 50 world championship medals.

 

Jessica has fibular hemimelia, a limb deficiency where the fibular bone is partially or completely missing in the lower leg. Her lower legs were amputated when she was just 18 months old. She learned to walk with prostheses. 

But this didn't stop her into trying sports. She has been involved in many sports including gymnastics, cheerleading, ice skating, biking, trampoline and rock climbing. But she began swimming in her grandparents' pool before joining her first competitive team in 2002.  

 At age twelve, she won the youngest competitor on the U.S Paralympic Team. One of her gold medals was the 100-meter freestyle, which she swam just 0.9 seconds ahead of Paralympic-record-holder a d world-record-holder. In her career, he she has achieved a lot of achievements. Here are the list of her achievements:

• Paralympic Games Athens 2004: 3 gold medals
• Paralympic Games Beijing 2008: 4 gold medals, 1 silver medal, 1 bronze medal
• Paralympic Games Rio de Janeiro 2016: 1 gold medal, 3 silver medals, 2 bronze medals
• Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020: 3 gold medals, 2 silver medals, 1 bronze medal