U.S. Paralympic swimmer Christie Raleigh Crossley won the silver medal at the 2024 Summer Paralympics in Paris, but their proud moment left them emotionally distressed when their physical abilities were questioned and led to bullying.
Crossley, who is married with three children and uses she/her and they/them pronouns, set a world record in the preliminary 50-meter freestyle in the S9 class after touching the wall at 27.28.
But after they medaled silver in the final, which combined swimmers in the S9 and S10 impairment classifications, Crossley said they were verbally accosted by another athlete who accused them of cheating for not being a disabled athlete.
The 37-year-old opened up about the criticism surrounding their disability, telling USA Today:
“It’s so great that I just broke a world record and won my first Paralympic medal on the same day."
Crossley added:
“But I got off a bus and got verbally accosted by another athlete from another country.”
Fighting tears, Crossley opened up about the challenges of being a disabled athlete and how it has affected their life.
“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," they said.
Crossley sustained major injuries from several accidents in the past that left them permanently impaired, including being hit by a drunk driver while crossing the street in 2007, leaving them with three herniated discs in their neck and one in their lower back.
On another occasion when they were struck by a car as a pedestrian, the blunt force trauma from the incident led to the development of a non-cancerous tumor in their brain.
Doctors discovered the blood tumor and bleeding on the brain after Crossley was accidentally struck in the head with ice while playing a snowball fight with their son in December 2018.
The bleeding on the brain, coupled with the surgical procedure to extract the tumor by removing part of the skull, caused paralysis on Crossley's left side of the body.
According to the news outlet, athlete classification in para-sport, which is governed by the IPC Athlete Classification Code and Standards, is based on "the degree of impairment as determined by a trained physician."
However, the process has long been scrutinized for being imperfect, given that the lines between classifications can be blurry.
Crossley said they met with a representative for athlete safety in the Paralympic Village following the bullying incident and online messages from trolls who accused them of not being a qualified competitor.
