After Most Challenging Paralympic Journey, McKenzie Coan Let It All Out In Paris

McKenzie Coan has just about seen it all during the course of her Para swimming career.

She’s now been to four Paralympic Games, won seven medals and finally in Paris had a schedule that allowed her to participate in the Opening Ceremony. And while she’s grateful for all of it, the 28-year-old remembers walking into the Paralympic Village this summer with a different depth to that feeling. That gratitude only grew as the Games went on.

“I was just thinking about a year ago when I was so concerned that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to make this team,” Coan, originally of Clarkesville, Georgia, said. “And I’d thought about entering the Village for the first time, eating in the cafeteria, experiencing that with my teammates and suitemates … it was the little moments I thought about most. Winning medals is great, but it was the little things with teammates I thought I’d never get to experience again, so when I got to Paris that gratitude felt like a whole different level.”

Coan is not only a veteran athlete but also a veteran of medical issues and setbacks. Born with osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, Coan has suffered no fewer than 100 fractures over her lifetime. If she were still counting, she might find the number much higher. The Bell’s palsy she experienced early in the summer of 2023, however, was a different animal. The whole left side of her face wasn’t working, so she’d start to choke in the water because she couldn’t close the left side of her mouth. She couldn’t keep the water out of her left nostril or blink her left eye.

She had to withdraw from last year’s world championships and push to make it to the Parapan American Games in Chile last November.

“I’m used to adversity, I’m used to challenges, but I’ve never experienced so many,” she said of the time leading up to Paris. “I was in a really different place coming into these Games because it was the first time, I won’t call it uncertainty, but I had a lot more I had to go through to get here than in past Games. I’d never cut it this close before.”

Coan’s first of four events in Paris was the 400-meter freestyle S7, a race in which she was the two-time defending Paralympic champion. Before she stepped onto the block she looked out over the water and couldn’t believe she was even there, about to swim in the final. The gratitude rushed over her, and she told herself that no matter how the race ended, she made it. That was something a year earlier she couldn’t always see in her future.

Once she hit the water, something even more incredible happened.

“It’s hard to put the feeling into words, but it’s almost like you’re weightless in the water and everything comes together at the right moment,” she said. “And for the last year I’d absolutely struggled in the water. Not from lack of trying or training, just from everything that had happened. It had been so heavy physically, but also emotionally and mentally, and I was worried I was never going to feel that again. But I dove in, and I felt it. That, to me, was a win in itself.”

By the last 150 meters, Coan knew she was doing well. She knew Giulia Terzi of Italy was next to her, and that meant she was in a good position. Then, Coan pulled ahead. The only one left in front of her was teammate Morgan Stickney, and they finished in that order to give Team USA a 1-2 podium moment.

And after more than a year of working to manage her emotions — don’t get too high, don’t get too low — it all came flowing out in a tearful post-race interview.

“The last year just washed over me, and it was finally OK to have a moment,” Coan said. “I finally allowed myself that release.”

Coan hasn’t slowed down much since Paris. She flew to Singapore on a few days notice to speak at a Disability Sports Forum, hung out on the field before a recent Baltimore Ravens game and began settling into a new apartment in Boston with her boyfriend, who recently started medical school there, and their cat Mookie, who was in Paris in spirit cheering her on thanks to her boyfriend’s homemade Fathead of the feline.

After a little training breather, Coan’s also now getting back into full-time training and finishing law school applications. But even though she’s planning for her future career in law, that doesn’t mean that her current career in swimming is over.

“I’m definitely going to try for Los Angeles in 2028,” she said. “I can’t imagine stepping away and not trying to qualify for a home Games. That would be my fifth Games, and at home? There’s nothing more magical than thinking about that opportunity, so I’m definitely going to stick around.

“The first year of law school is the hardest, so between that and balancing training and competition I’ve got to put my head down and get through it, but I think there’s a way to make both of those dreams work. I’m not going to miss an opportunity for LA, and I’m definitely ready to get on the road to becoming a lawyer because I’ve put it off for a long time. So I’m very excited about that.”

Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to USParaSwimming.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.