In May last year, 22-year-old Ali Truwit was snorkelling from a boat in the Turks & Caicos Islands with a fellow-swimmer from the Yale University team, Sophie Pilkinton.
The friends had been enjoying a holiday to celebrate their graduation – but at this point the trip took a dark turn.
The area was not known for sharks, but what was later thought to have been a bull shark suddenly approached “and started attacking us and aggressively bumping us and ramming us from underneath,” as Truwit told NBC News.
“We fought back and shoved and kicked, but pretty quickly it got my leg in its mouth. And the next thing I knew, it had bitten off my foot and part of my leg.”
Yet now, barely 15 months after the traumatic encounter, Truwit is preparing to compete in three international races with the US team at the Paris Paralympic Games.
As the shark circled, it was Truwit’s swimming training that came to the fore. “We made the split-second decision to swim for our lives, roughly 75 yards in the open ocean water back to the boat,” she said.
The two women made it to the safety of the vessel where Pilkinton, in an action Truwit credits for saving her life, staunched the bleeding with a tourniquet.
She was rushed to hospital for emergency treatment before being flown back to the USA for surgery. She underwent three operations: two in Miami to fight infection, and then in New York, on her 23rd birthday, her left leg was amputated below the knee.
Harrowing flashbacks
Part of Truwit’s rehabilitation involved pool-work, and she was helped by her former college swimming coach Jamie Barone. Getting back into water, even the family pool in Darien, Connecticut, proved psychologically challenging at first because immersion and splashing sounds would trigger harrowing flashbacks to the shark encounter.
Describing Truwit as “the hardest worker I’ve ever met”, Barone says that she never missed a day of practice, with the flashbacks and discomfort reducing the harder she worked.
Although her initial objective had been simply to learn to use her prosthetic leg and regain her strength, by December Truwit was swimming freestyle and backstroke in the US Paralympics Swimming National Championships in Orlando, Florida – and won a medal.
Ideas of competing in the Los Angeles Paralympics in 2028 then gave way to a more ambitious drive towards Paris in 2024.
This April Truwit swam the 400m freestyle, in the S10 category for swimmers with physical impairment affecting a joint, at an international competition in Portugal. Then, at trials in late June, she won the events that qualified her for the US Paralympics team – the 400m and 100m freestyle and 100m backstroke.
Becoming water-safe
Truwit has also found time to launch a foundation called Stronger Than You Think. “I have come to understand how expensive prosthetics are and how little is covered by insurance,” she says. “I’ve also been reminded how critical being a capable swimmer was to my survival.
“I started Stronger Than You Think to help people in need of financial assistance with their prosthetics, as well as to help people become water-safe.”
Calling the swimmer “inspirational”, Connecticut’s governor has designated tomorrow (28 August), the day the Paralympics begin, as Ali Truwit Day in the state.
“I’m unique in that I was attacked by a shark, but I’m not unique in that we all go through hardship and trauma and tough times in life and we all have the capacity to rise back up,” Truwit told NBC.
Also on Divernet: ‘FREAK EVENT’: SNORKELLER PLAYS DOWN SHARK BITE, OCEANIC WHITETIP SHARK BITES COMPETITIVE FREEDIVER, STUART COVE’S INVESTIGATES AFTER SHARK BITES BOY, DOES FEWER SHARK BITES MEAN FEWER SHARKS?
