"I went from enjoying a world record to being utterly devastated," reflects U.S. swimmer Christie Raleigh Crossley. On Tuesday night, she silenced her critics by securing her first gold medal at the Paralympics. Despite this triumph, Crossley revealed she was "verbally accosted" by her own teammates. What led to this surprising backlash against her?
37-year-old Raleigh Crossley made a splash at her first Paralympics in Paris by setting a world record in the 50-meter freestyle S9 preliminary heat.?
However, her triumph was soon overshadowed by social media attacks questioning her disability, including from both a U.S. athlete and an international competitor.?
Later that evening, she won silver in the final but admitted that the criticism had affected her performance.
"It's so great that I just broke a world record and won my first Paralympic medal on the same day," Raleigh Crossley told USA Today. "But I got off a bus and got verbally accosted by another athlete from another country."
"To be told online by all of these bullies that I’m somehow not as disabled as I appear just because I can swim faster than them is pretty devastating," she added.
After that tough start, Crossley chose to distance herself from U.S. Paralympics Swimming and connect with athletes from other sports.
In the wake of that turbulent debut, Raleigh Crossley said she distanced herself from U.S. Paralympics Swimming in Paris and started spending time with U.S. athletes from other disciplines, including track, sitting volleyball and paratriathlon.?
On Tuesday, she redeemed herself by winning gold in the 100-meter backstroke S9, setting a Paralympic record with a time of 1:07.02, and silencing her critics with her performance.
From her middle school days, Christie Raleigh Crossley harboured dreams of competing in the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Game, as per her US Team profile.?
However, her path took a dramatic turn in 2007 when she sustained a neck and back injury from a drunk driving accident, followed by a brain injury in 2008 from a hit-and-run accident.
In 2018, with both her children in school, Crossley decided to give swimming one final shot, aiming for the Tokyo Olympics.?
But her hopes were shattered on December 12, 2018, during a ski trip when she experienced paralysis on her left side due to a previously undetected blood tumor in her brain.?
After tumuor surgery seemed to end her Olympic dreams, Crossley found inspiration in Paralympic swimmer Michelle Konkoly, whom she saw during the Tokyo Olympics broadcast. This led her to explore Paralympic sports.
By early 2022, Crossley began training as a Para swimmer and quickly made her mark, breaking her first American record in March.
At the Paris Paralympics, Crossley's world record in the prelims and later, winning a silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle S9 classification on the first day, was marred by a wave of online harassment, including criticism from fellow athletes like U.S. Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long and Spanish Paralympian Sarai Gascon Moreno.
Despite facing backlash for the past two years, Crossley found the recent attacks particularly painful.?
"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," The Washington Post quotes her as saying. "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."
The intensity of the criticism prompted Crossley to seek support from athlete safety officials in the Paralympic Village.?
"So I went from enjoying a world record (set in the morning heats) to being utterly devastated that the entire world seemed to think I was a cheater and that I was somehow faking my hole in my brain and the cyst in my spinal cord," she said.
She questioned whether shaving her head and displaying her scar will help prove her condition of disability.
But even in her moment of vulnerability, she put the criticism to good use, hoping it brings to light how other people who face invisible disabilities felt.
"But no, it's been pretty awful, and the fact it is a prominent team member of Team USA who has come after me the hardest, it's just absolutely disgusting. I'm not going to comment on who it was, but I will say that for all those people out there who have invisible disabilities, I stand with you and I sit with you, too."
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