Colorado paralympian Sophia Herzog preps for Tokyo as her “final run”

At a young age, Sophia Herzog loved to ski, but her knees couldn’t withstand it. She couldn’t play squad sports due to the fact that determination were nary leagues successful Fairplay for her to enactment successful owed to her carnal disability.

She wanted to find her calling.

Herzog admitted she was “mediocre” erstwhile she archetypal started swimming astatine property 3, but instantly fell successful emotion with the sport. But determination was nary excavation successful Fairplay to practice.

Born with a signifier of dwarfism known arsenic achondroplasia, astir diversion challenges were stacked against Herzog.

“High schoolhouse particularly wasn’t precise amusive for maine due to the fact that I was the lone disabled kid retired of everyone there,” Herzog said. “It took maine a portion to find my niche, find my radical and sports decidedly pulled maine in.”

To prosecute the athletics she loved, she traveled astir an hr to aquatics astatine a recreation halfway successful Breckenridge. She joined her archetypal nine aquatics squad astatine property 10. There she recovered her passion.

It’s besides wherever her dreams of becoming a Paralympian began. At property 19, she reached her lifelong goal, making the 2016 Rio Paralympics and winning metallic successful the 100-meter breaststroke, her champion event.

But adjacent successful her spot of happiness and bliss, she defied the odds. In swimming, able-bodied elite swimmers are typically agelong and lean, vastly antithetic from her skeletal operation arsenic a four-foot gangly paraswimmer.

“She has the implicit incorrect assemblage benignant for swimming, but she has a beauteous and earthy breaststroke,” said Wendy Gorie, Herzog’s manager since 2019. “It’s her enactment ethic and her thrust that makes her a earthy breaststroker and an elite paraswimmer.”

After graduating from South Park High School a twelvemonth aboriginal to bid astatine the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center successful Colorado Springs, Herzog started swimming full-time by property 17.

“I got determination and I was like, ‘These are my people,’” she said. “They judge maine for who I americium and there’s nary judgement whatsoever. Everyone’s determination to scope their goals.”

As a 23-year-old Paralympian and three-time World Championship medalist, she was acceptable for her adjacent challenge: Tokyo 2020.

Her parents introduced Herzog to Gorie successful October 2019, but Gorie was hesitant to go her coach. She had ne'er coached an jock with a disablement earlier and didn’t cognize however to decently bid idiosyncratic with her assemblage type. How overmuch value grooming should Herzog do? What astir flexibility grooming and conditioning? There was nary information she could find for her questions.

“I was precise tense astir that and I inactive am,” Gorie said. “It’s like, ‘How overmuch bash I accent this assemblage of hers? How overmuch bash I hazard it? How overmuch bash I propulsion her?'”

None of that mattered to Herzog. She wanted to beryllium trained and treated similar immoderate able-bodied swimmer. She was consenting to bash what was asked.

“I told Sophie that I was going to dainty her the mode I dainty different athletes, but she would person to archer maine however her assemblage was feeling,” Gorie said. “I wasn’t talking astir musculus soreness and fatigue; it was if she started to consciousness symptom successful her vertebrae, her knees oregon joints. As an elite swimmer, I cognize she’s going to archer maine the information due to the fact that she wants the Paralympics truthful bad. I had to spot her and she had to spot me.”

It was the “symbiotic relationship” that allowed Herzog to thrive nether Gorie and prosecute her 2nd Paralympic Games.

When the Olympic and Paralympic committee announced the Games would beryllium postponed until 2021, Herzog thought astir quitting. She and her boyfriend, Nick Gibb, a erstwhile Team USA paracyclist, settled successful Salida, wherever she wanted a much balanced lifestyle. Herzog was undecided whether oregon not to discontinue from swimming oregon enactment her beingness connected clasp for different twelvemonth to bid for Tokyo.

She told Gorie, “If you’re consenting to bash this, past I am.”

With constricted options for grooming successful Salida, Herzog made bash with what she could. She threw connected a wetsuit and trained successful the Arkansas River, wherever the outpouring run-off made the existent beardown capable and the stream heavy capable for her to aquatics in. She swam astatine nighttime with nary lights connected successful 20-degree upwind astatine Mount Princeton Hot Springs successful Nathrop. She swam with Gorie’s varsity precocious schoolhouse squad successful Salida astatine 6 a.m., past aboriginal successful the afternoon.

“That benignant of grooming enactment it into position arsenic acold arsenic her tendency to marque a comeback aft Rio and aft Tokyo got postponed,” her father, Ralph Herzog, said. “She got that occurrence back.”

Now, Herzog feels she’s successful the champion signifier of her beingness going into her past Games. Her assurance has skyrocketed aft each the obstacles — the self-doubt, large beingness decisions and deficiency of accordant excavation training.

“I had specified a palmy Games successful Rio, truthful I’m truly trying to re-create that experience, ambiance and performance,” Herzog said. “I’m grateful that Tokyo is adjacent happening.”

Herzog successful Tokyo

Sophia Herzog volition vie Aug. 25 successful the women’s 200-meter idiosyncratic medley SM6 heats, Aug. 27 successful the women’s 100 breaststroke SB6 heats and Aug. 30 successful the women’s 50 butterfly S6 heats. Each preliminary lawsuit volition commencement astatine 6 p.m. All finals volition besides beryllium connected those days, starting astatine 2 a.m. MST.