US swimmer Haven Shepherd lost her legs as a baby after her parents detonated a bomb intended to kill the whole family.
This week, at her maiden Paralympics in Tokyo, the upbeat teenager said that her goals were all about “just going out and having fun.”
Shepherd was 14 months old and living in rural Vietnam when her birth parents — who she has been told were having an affair and could not marry — decided to take their own lives, as well as the child’s.
Photo: AFP
They strapped themselves to a bomb, held Haven and detonated the device, killing themselves instantly and blasting their tiny daughter 12m out of their hut.
She survived, although doctors were forced to amputate her legs. Six months later, she was adopted by a US family who took her to Missouri to begin a new life.
Now 18, she described her debut at the Paralympics on Saturday last week as “a surreal moment.”
“It’s something you talk about with your family for five years, and it finally happened,” she said of her first race, where she finished fifth in the SM8 200m individual medley.
“I’m just going out and having fun,” she said. “I know that I’m here and I made it. I accomplished my goal of making it to the Paralympics.”
Shepherd also swam in Wednesday morning’s SB7 100m breaststroke heats, missing out on a place in the final.
However, she is excited about having the Paralympics in the international spotlight and said that she is “open” about telling her story to the world.
That ease with her distressing backstory comes from her adoptive mother, who had no hesitation about answering when a five-year-old Haven suddenly asked her where she came from one bath time, she said.
“Some people don’t even know their story — I think why I am the person I am today is because I got to learn about who I was before I got to live this life,” she said.
Shepherd said that she easily accepted the explanation, and “understood on a deeper level” what had happened to her.
Growing up in Missouri with six siblings, Shepherd said that she never felt left out because of her disability.
She described putting her prosthetic legs on as no different to wearing glasses, and said that her disability has never held her back.
She began swimming at 10 years old, and quickly fell in love with it.
“Swimming just means everything to me,” she said.
“It could be the 10th practice of the week and I’m just dog-tired and I don’t want to go, but I still look forward to it because it gives me time to be away from my phone and my legs and worrying about things I need to do later,” she said. “It gives you such a sense of peace.”
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