Meet Lauren Scruggs: The first Black American woman to win an individual Olympics fencing medal
(PARIS) — Star fencer Lauren Scruggs knew that she would be making history heading into her gold medal matchup against fellow American Lee Kiefer in the women’s individual foil final at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
But the gravity of the moment still would leave her in a state of “disbelief.”
“I thought I was dreaming,” Scruggs told ABC News, recounting the hour leading up to the final. “I never expected to make it that far.”
Though Scruggs came up short of the gold on July 28, losing to Kiefer 15-6 at the revered Grand Palais, Scruggs made history as the first Black American woman to win an individual medal in fencing.
It also marked the first time American women won both gold and silver Olympic medals at individual foil fencing.
At 21, Scruggs is a rising senior at Harvard with an already well-accomplished resume in fencing at the collegiate level, including First Team All-American, according to her Olympic bio.
As a New York City native, she is also a mentor with the Peter Westbrook Foundation, which teaches fencing to underserved communities.
The founder, Peter Westbrook, has quite the history himself. Considered a “legend” among American Olympic fencers, he won a bronze medal in fencing at the 1984 Summer Olympics and competed in four other Games.
Due to a medical illness, however, Westbrook was not able to travel to Paris to see Scruggs win her silver Olympic medal, but she credits him with having a profound impact on her career.
“I think he’s a big reason why I am where I am today,” Scruggs said.
Scruggs hopes her achievements can help spotlight Black participation in the sport.
“I think my success in fencing has helped break stereotypes about what Black people can do and who can be a fencer,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — A woman who lost a leg in a shark attack is now heading to Paris to compete in the 2024 Paralympics.
“The 1st time I got back in [the water] was in July, a year ago,” Ali Truwit told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “I got back in with a floaty around my stomach because we weren’t sure how I was going to respond in the water again, and now I’m headed to the Paralympics.”
She added, “To represent my country is just an incredible kind of journey that makes me feel proud and also really grateful.”
Truwit said she was on a post-college graduation vacation with her best friend in Turks and Caicos in May 2023 when the attack occurred.
The two were out in the ocean snorkeling when a shark appeared “seemingly out of nowhere” and started to attack them, Truwit recalled.
“We fought back, but pretty quickly the shark had my leg in its mouth, and the next thing I knew, it had bitten off my foot and part of my leg,” she said.
Truwit said she and her friend had to swim roughly 75 yards back to the snorkeling boat.
Once on the boat, Truwit said her friend tied a tourniquet on her leg to stop the bleeding. Truwit was eventually airlifted to a hospital in Miami, where she underwent two lifesaving surgeries.
She was later transported to a hospital in New York to be closer to her family and friends at home, where she underwent a trans-tibial amputation on her left leg.
The surgery took place on May 31, 2023, Truwit’s 23rd birthday.
“Very dark days,” she recounted of that time in her life. “But I am alive, and that’s what I try to focus on and kind of just live the life that I’ve been given again to the fullest.”
Adapting to a new normal
After her amputation, a prosthetic leg helped provide Truwit with better mobility, although she said she still faced challenges adapting to her new normal.
“I’m relearning life without an ankle,” she explained. “I have to learn how to sit again and stand again, and walk again, and run, and how to do stairs and the everyday challenges.”
Truwit said she also faced pain in her leg as well as the risk of infection, and struggled emotionally in addition to the physical limitations.
“There are a lot of challenges for me with body image … learning to love my new body and accept it and learn that it’s beautiful in its own right,” she said. “And I think that’s been something that’s been so huge for me.”
Truwit described her recovery process as a “very long and bumpy road of ups and downs.”
She said she was able to pull through it with the help of family and friends and a shift in her own mindset.
“I think I really, early on, wanted to send myself the message that [what] would happen to me was not going to stop me from doing things I love and doing things I think I’m capable of,” she said.
Reclaiming her passion by fighting back her fear
The incident also affected Truwit’s love for water, which she said she had considered a place of comfort and peace her whole life.
In order to confront her fear, Truwit said she waded into her backyard pool just six weeks after having her leg amputated.
“Mentally and physically, it was really hard, [but] with the help of my physical therapists and my family, we worked to just get me back in, little by little,” she recalled.
From there, she began reaching out to her longtime coach Jamie Barone, who she said has been coaching her since she was 12. She said she asked him to help her run sets for exercise again.
After regaining her love of water, Truwit said she decided to test out her ability to make it to Paris for the Paralympics, which she said became “the most healing decision I could have made for my recovery.”
She expressed her intention to compete in the Paralympics to her mom, who she said is a former captain for the Yale University swimming team.
Through one of her mom’s former teammates, Truwit said she was connected to the U.S. Paralympic swim program, where she began to train and compete less than four months after her amputation surgery.
In June, Truwit competed in the Paralympic trials in Minneapolis and made the U.S. team in the Women’s 400-meter freestyle race.
In the weeks leading up to the Paralympic Games, which start on Aug. 28, Truwit said she has trained for as much as six hours per day, six days a week at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado and with her coach in Stamford at Chelsea Piers in Connecticut.
“It’s so fun to be with my teammates and the coaches and to learn more about what’s to come, so I’m really excited for it all,” she said. “I’m in a race with the American flag on my cap. That, to me, is not only a huge honor in itself, but also a way for me to thank the everyday American heroes who have helped save my life and help me rebuild my life.”
Swimming at the Paralympic Games will take place from Aug. 29 to Sept. 7.
Inspiring others through her journey
Prior to the shark attack, Truwit said she had always been a private person, but she later learned that sharing her story has helped others as well as herself.
“The exposure is new for me, and every time someone tells me that hearing my story helps them through their trauma, or watching my outlook or my mindset or the way that I bounce back has encouraged them, that they can do it too, that heals me,” she said. “That helps me. That gives meaning to me of an otherwise random trauma.”
Looking back at her journey, from the start of her recovery process to where she is today, Truwit said she has witnessed her own strength firsthand.
“We are so much stronger than we think,” she said. “We have so much more in us than we think we’re capable of contributing and achieving and aiming for … and that is such an exciting thought to me.”
(NEW YORK) — As the 2024 Summer Olympics officially kick off in Paris on July 26, USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan joined Brad Mielke on Thursday’s episode of “Start Here,” ABC News’ flagship daily news podcast, and dived into the concession made by the U.S. Olympic Committee and officials from Salt Lake City, Utah, in order to secure the city’s bid to host the 2034 Winter Games, which the city also hosted in 2002.
START HERE: But as far as the U.S. is concerned, the biggest Olympics story of the day did not have anything to do with Paris at all. In the wee hours of the morning, Salt Lake City, Utah, learned it will once again be the host of the Winter Olympics, in 2034. That was the sound of people cheering this news at 4 a.m. local time in Salt Lake City. They’ve got a decade to get even more amped up.
But the International Olympic Committee announced a rule here that has already created a really weird vibe. Let’s take you to Paris right now, where Christine Brennan is covering the Games. She’s a sports columnist with USA Today…she’s also an ABC News contributor. Christine, can you just explain what’s going on with the future Olympics?
BRENNAN: Brad, this was crazy. Salt Lake City is really the only city that wants to host the Winter Olympics. It’s getting harder and harder for the International Olympic Committee to find cities and countries that are interested. It costs so much money, it’s so difficult. Obviously, climate change, you know, all the things that we know about what it is with an Olympics.
So you get a city like Salt Lake City, which hosted the 2002 Olympics and did a fabulous job, great Olympic Games. And this was a slam dunk. Everyone just expected it would just go without any issue, any problem. Instead, several International Olympic Committee members proposed an amendment. And they want the U.S. to drop the FBI investigation into the Chinese doping controversy.
START HERE: Yeah, I think the language was like the U.S. cannot “undermine the world anti-doping agency,” they can’t undermine WADA, which you’d think like, why would they do that? And yet it apparently all goes back to this federal investigation of Chinese athletes. Can you brush us up on that?
BRENNAN: We just found out about it. The New York Times and a German public broadcasting company exposed it a few months ago. Chinese swimmers, the 23 swimmers tested positive before the Tokyo Olympics. But it was never revealed, no transparency. They went to compete in Tokyo and three, three golds. They won three golds. And 11 of them, of the 23, are competing here. And so all these athletes that competed in Tokyo, including Katie Ledecky in a relay, came in second to people who had tested positive a few months earlier. That outrages the United States.
Because of a law known as the Rodchenkov Act, it allows the U.S., in this case, the FBI, to go after officials or others in a criminal manner and criminal prosecution, who were involved in this doping scheme. They’ve already served a subpoena to the World Aquatics executive director. Again that’s swimming, to try to figure out this doping scheme, what happened and why the world didn’t know about it.
START HERE: OK, so this is like an ultimatum. You can have the Games if you stop investigating this. What did U.S. organizers do?
BRENNAN: Stunningly and amazingly, just I cannot believe it, the Salt Lake City officials and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee caved.
START HERE: Wow.
BRENNAN: They caved. And so while you had Katie Ledecky an hour and a half earlier in a press conference talking about the importance of clean sport. One floor and 90 minutes later, you had these officials caving in to demands, as from the International Olympic Committee, for them to get rid of the investigation into something that Katie Ledecky — Michael Phelps just testified in front of Congress — that they care so much about.
START HERE: Right and it’s interesting, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency sounded pretty furious about this, but they sound more upset with the IOC for pressuring Salt Lake City. Local organizers though, Christine, sounded upbeat about this. You had Utah Gov. Spencer Cox yesterday defending all this. But I guess I’m just confused as to why the organizers made this concession? Like if the U.S. has been so public about wanting to go after these people and protecting their own athletes, frankly?
BRENNAN: Because they were scared they were going to lose the Olympics otherwise. I cannot believe that Salt Lake officials and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee didn’t just say no.
Now, what’s going to end up happening here, I believe, is that it will be a rude awakening, because I cannot imagine Congress taking too kindly to what the U.S. Olympic Committee and the Salt Lake officials just did. And I’ve got to believe that if any of these officials show up and deserve to be arrested, they’re going to get a knock on the door and they’re going to be arrested. And so they may be the most shocked people on the planet when they thought they got this deal from Salt Lake City.
So it’s truly a mess. It’s stunning. It’s exactly the way that they did not want to kick off the Olympic week. But it is something worthy of all of our attention.
I think for a lot of people, they remember Salt Lake City and they remember the bribery scandal from 1999. Once again, Salt Lake City officials are involved again in a major controversy of their own making. This is supposed to be such a positive thing, and now they’re mired right back in controversy, just as they were at the beginning of the century.
START HERE: Wow. Unbelievable. And Christine Brennan will, of course, have a column in USA Today that’s out actually right now this morning. Thank you so much, Christine.
(PARIS) — Noah Lyles came up short in his quest for the 100-meter, 200-meter double at the Paris Olympics. He did get the bronze, but had been aiming to be the first American to win both in 40 years.
Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo took the gold in 19.46 seconds, running away from American Kenny Bednarek — who took silver — and Lyles.
Lyles told NBC after the race he tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, but chose to race anyway. His representative confirmed the diagnosis to ABC News.
Lyles was the favorite in the event, but ran only 19.70. He has a career-best of 19.31 — set at the world championships in 2022 — and a season best of 19.53.
Lyles looked extremely fatigued after the race and sat down on the track after the event. He was attended to by medical professionals and taken off the track in a wheelchair.
The 21-year-old Tebogo set a career-best time in the final as well as an African record.
Lyles also took bronze in Tokyo three years ago.
Usain Bolt is the last person to accomplish the 100 meters and 200 meters — in 2016 — when he did it for the third straight Olympics. Carl Lewis was the last American to win the 100 and 200 when he did the double at the Los Angeles Games in 1984.
Lyles won the 100 meters on Tuesday in a historically close race. He edged out Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson by just 0.005 seconds.
Lyles was attempting to win three golds at the Paris Games by also winning in the 100-meter relay. Lewis is also the last person to win the 100 meters, 200 meters and 4×100-meter relay when he did it in 1984.
Following his win in the 100 meters, Lyles was asked how he felt about completing the triple.
“Pretty confident,” he said. “I can’t lie.”
Lyles ran the anchor leg in the qualifying heats Thursday, taking first place in the group. The final will be held Friday at 1:47 p.m. ET. He told NBC he wasn’t sure if he would run in the 100 meters, but was leaning toward not competing.