Truwit takes silver a year on from near-death shark attack

Even in the story-laden world of the Paralympics, where things are never monochrome, it is hard to trump getting your leg bitten off by a shark one year and swimming for medals in Paris the next.

- Tanya Aldred

Yet that is the true tale behind the success of Ali Truwit, the 24-yearold former Yale competitive swimmer and now silver medallist at La Défense Arena in the S10 400m freestyle, who in 2023 fought off a shark in the waters of Turks and Caicos in the Atlantic Ocean, and saved her own life by racing 70 metres to a boat, having lost part of her left leg.

Truwit was on a celebratory snorkelling trip with her friend Sophie one flawless May morning, days after graduating from Yale University. In the aftermath of the attack, after Sophie had stemmed the flow of blood by tying a makeshift tourniquet as the boat raced back to land, she was airlifted to hospital where the doctors fought first to save her life, and then operated on her leg, eventually amputating just below the knee.