Susannah Scaroni on the Magic Outside Your Comfort Zone

DAVID GREENE, HOST: Hey, everybody, just so you know, in this episode of Sports in America, we’re going to talk a lot about eating disorders and recovery. So I encourage you to listen with care.

[STARTING PISTOL GOING OFF]

BROADCASTER: Twelve and a half laps around the track, first medal event in the women’s T54 classification.

[MUSIC]

SUSANNAH SCARONI: When I first qualified for Tokyo, I was somebody that was starting to get faster, but I was still some of the third to fifth place range, with more emphasis on like the fifth place.

DG: Going into the Tokyo Olympics, Susannah Scaroni felt like she was fumbling around in the dark.

It was the summer of 2021, and the COVID pandemic had pushed the games back a full year from when they were originally scheduled. That meant Susannah hadn’t competed in person with any of her usual opponents in a long time. Who knew how they were doing? She hadn’t been able to beat many of them before. Is it possible they’d gotten slower than her? What if they’d gotten faster?

SS: I hadn’t raced in a year, and so I was still of the mindset like I’m still in that like fifth place range. I’ve always kind of had the reputation that’s like, I love to work hard. But for the first time, going to Tokyo is kind of like, “Okay, I do want to try to medal here.” And so I think that means like, I need to not do what I feel comfortable doing. I knew that’s what it was going to take.`

[THEME MUSIC]

DG: From WHYY and PRX, this is Sports in America. I’m David Greene.

Today, we have Susannah Scaroni. And you’re going to want to stick around for her story. Susannah is a wheelchair racer. And she does long distances. She actually specializes in the wheelchair marathon. Yes, you heard that right. That’s 26.2 miles from the seat of a racing wheelchair. In fact, her next race is coming up this week: it’s the New York City Marathon on November 2.

Before Susannah became an internationally famous racer, she grew up in a rural town in Washington state. And at just 5 years old, Susannah and her family got into a brutal car accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

In this episode, you’ll hear how that accident — and every challenge that’s unfolded in her life since then — could not even begin to slow Susannah down. Her story is rare. Susannah is the kind of athlete who can push through pain with grace and exceptional patience, even for 26.2 miles at a time. She’s got singular mental toughness that you just don’t see every day, even among other pro athletes.

I mean, that was on full display in the Tokyo Olympics, when Susannah was competing in the 5,000-meter race. She’d done this race before, but she had never landed on the podium. This year, Susannah wanted a medal. And she had a plan to get one.

She was going to take special care to pace herself, sticking with her fellow racers for the bulk of those 5,000 meters, and then she’d try to take the lead in the last few laps, in what’s called a sprint finish.

[MUSIC]

SS: I was honestly quite terrified because I’m not a great sprint finisher, and I knew that’s what it was going to take. I was like, I need to be able to conserve energy so I can maybe have a chance at a sprint finish. So I was really nervous because I really wanted to do something that I didn’t feel like I had much experience with.

BROADCASTER: So we also saw Susannah Scaroni, she typically has not had a great start and really doesn’t want to get caught in that shuffle. Wants to be in a place where she feels relatively comfortable.

SS: So, haven’t raced in over a year against the people I’m competing with. Have no idea how anyone else is doing. And just know that I’m gonna try my best to, you know, be in a strategic position at the end.

DG: As Susannah is trying to execute this strategy, preserving her energy for a sprint finish, she got hit with some bad luck.

SS: I didn’t know what speed I was going or what anybody was going because my GPS wasn’t working in the stadium.

DG: Oh, that’s not good, right?

SS: No, not usually for me.

DG: When she started the race, Susannah realized the GPS she brought with her didn’t work inside the Olympic stadium. And so she had to try to pace herself without knowing at all how fast she was actually going.

SS: And so I just pulled what was comfortable.

DG: And before she knew it…

SS: And then when I was going to come over to let the next person go, I realized the rest of the group was like 100 meters behind me.

BROADCASTER: Scaroni’s gone out in front, the American, 30 years old from Takoa, Washington.

SS: And so immediately I was like, my gosh, exactly what I was not going to do.

DG: Susannah had pulled ahead of the other racers. Like, way ahead. Completely by accident. I mean so much for pacing herself.

BROADCASTER: Susannah Scaroni is all alone on the screen right now, expanding her lead.

SS: So I was like, okay, when they catch me, I don’t want to be dead, so I’m just gonna go conservatively until they do and get back into my original plan.

DG: She waited for them to catch up to her, at which point she would return to her plan to stick with the pack. But they didn’t.

[MUSIC]

SS: And then after a while, I’m realizing they’re not catching up, and there’s two laps left, and I was like “I think I might be able to pull this off.” So I was emotionally like in turmoil. I was like this is not how this race was supposed to go. This is crazy, but I just like picked it up as much as I could.

DG: Emotional turmoil, because nothing about this race is unfolding like Susannah planned. Failing to pace herself could mean she uses up all her energy before the race is over, and that she wouldn’t have gas in the tank to pull forward in the end.

BROADCASTER: She’s putting that experience on display in the lead, at the bell, in a solo run for gold right now.

BROADCASTER: This is absolutely spectacular!

SS: When they rang the bell and I was still leading, I could not believe it. And so I was just going as fast as I could

DG: And then, all of a sudden, the race was over.

AANOUNCER 1: And she has ridden her strenght to her first Paralympic medal and that first medal is golden! Susannah Scaroni is the champ of the 5,000 in a new Paralympic record.

SS: Finished the race, felt horrible, honestly. I was like, “What in the world just happened? Like something horrible must have happened because why did that go like that?”

DG: Susannah came in first. She had finally won gold in the Olympics.

SS: It really took me a long time to process that I was one second off the world record and that it was actually a fast race, and that I actually had been strong and that I was actually really a faster athlete than I had been two years ago.

BROADCASTER: Wow, what a moment here, Susannah, you’re third Paralympics and you finally you have a medal and it’s gold! What do you think?
SUSANNAH IN THE INTERVIEW: (Laughs) It happened by accident but it really was a blessing to me.

DG: Wow. So you were, literally had no expectation that you were going to crush the race like you did.

SS: No, none at all. In fact, I would have bet money that I would not have gotten a gold medal. Yeah, I think my overall experience in Tokyo was something like I was really strong and fast, but I didn’t have any confidence. And so I really was grateful for Tokyo to build my confidence. I think, yeah, it was eye-opening for me and for my coach, and I think for everyone that, you
know, I could see where I was compared to where everyone else was at that point.

[MUSIC]

DG: Susannah was at her peak. She’d trained her entire life to win gold in the Olympics, and her confidence in herself now matched her ability on the course. It felt like nothing could slow her down. But she was about to be tested again.

So you’re in that mindset coming out, winning Olympic gold, and then I know things took a turn again at this moment when things are looking at such a high point. What happened?

SS: I did think, like, maybe this is not a coincidence. Maybe this is the end of my racing career.

DG: But let’s hit pause on that story for a moment. We’ll get to the aftermath of the Tokyo Olympics. We need to understand first Susannah’s early years and how they helped make her into the racer she is today.

I would love to go back to kind of your beginnings, like do you mind painting me a picture of Eastern Washington, and growing up, and what it was like there, like kind of take us there, transport us there.

SS: Yes, so I was born in actually a small town in Oregon, Burns, Oregon. I’m the fourth kid, quite a bit younger. So my closest sibling is six years older than me. And then it goes like eight years and then nine years.

DG: Gotcha. You’re the young one.

SS: So they’re all kind of close together. And then I was a little bit later. And so when I was born, my dad had brain cancer. At the age, like when I was four months old, he died.

DG: Mm. God, so hard.

SS: Yeah, yeah, it was a big part of our family kind of identity. And both him and my mom were foresters. So they worked in Oregon as foresters. And when I was two, my mom lost her job with the forest service. And so she was looking for a job, had a single mom with four kids, `and she found a forestry job in Northern Idaho.

[MUSIC]

SS: And so we moved there, and she was raising us on her own. And then we lived in this really tiny town of 800 people.

DG: Everybody knew each other, probably.

SS: Yeah, you know everyone and their dogs.

DG: Uh-huh. (Laughs)

SS: So it’s about five miles from the Idaho border. And so in that part of Washington, there’s tons of rolling wheat fields.

[BIRDS CHIRPING]

SS: Lentil fields. You’re right by the Idaho panhandle. So just across the border, you’ve got mountains, rivers, and lakes.

DG: Sounds gorgeous.

SS: It was a beautiful place to grow up. You have four seasons, no humidity. It’s wonderful. And you also get pretty decent winters. And so when I was five, my mom and my oldest brother, Jesse, and I were going up to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to get some work done on our car. And my sister and my other brother both had a basketball game. So my sister was cheerleading. My brother was playing in the band, I think? So, the rest of us went up to Coeur d’Alene. On our way there, we were on this windy mountain highway and slid on black ice into oncoming traffic. This was ‘97, and I was five years old. I remember the strap on my seatbelt had been, like, rubbing on my neck. And it wasn’t as common to have kids in booster seats back then. So I had just taken it off. So I had my belt strap on me, but not the shoulder strap. And then when we collided with the vehicle, I went forward super quickly and snapped my spinal cord. Pretty low, I would say. So thoracic vertebrae number 12. And so what that means for me, I have a complete spinal cord injury and below that lesion level, which is for me right where my legs start, pretty much. No sensation and no ability to move them. I also don’t have any muscle tone, so there’s no like spasticity in my legs. And grateful that my brother and my mom both lived. My brother actually hit his head on the dashboard in the front seat and had a really severe injury, but had a recovery. He is great. My mom’s great. You know, went through all the rehab, all the hospitals, and then kind of eventually went back home to Tekoa, which is that small town. Tekoa is an awesome community. As soon as I got back, they kind of just decided, “Okay, what do we need to do to make our town better for Susannah?”

DG: Wow

SS: So they put curb cuts in. I was in kindergarten. I remember that they put an elevator in the high school, just like preparing for me and making that accessible for me.

[MSUCI]

DG: The whole town came together, it sounds like?

SS: OH yeah, totally. So that was the community I was getting back into, a really awesome one. And more than that, when I got back into kindergarten and started going back to school, the best thing they did for me is they integrated me back seamlessly. So I wasn’t ever separated, and bars were never set lower for me. I had the same homework requirements. When I was in recess, my classmates were rolling down this giant grass hill we had. And so for me, I was like, “Obviously, I’m gonna do that too.” So from a very early time after my injury, I learned how to get in and out of my wheelchair by myself, just so that I could roll down the hill. (Laughs) I also had to scoot back up the hill. We had some pretty thick gravel, so I had to like, you know, figure out how to navigate gravel. All of those things. My bedroom was also upstairs, and my mom and grandparents kind of decided like they would try it out instead of redoing our house. And that was, I never noticed it being a bad thing. I would just scoot up our 14 stairs every day and figured out how to transfer into my bed, figured out how to get the light switch on and off.
DG: Really? So you would like scoot, just scoot up on your bum like up the stairs, and wow.
SS: Yeah, so we just had like a handrail, and I would just like put one hand there and one hand on the step and just like scoot up every day. And like looking back, I know that all of these things have, one, helped me have an upper body that allowed me to be independent. But then two is helped me learn how to be creative and just kind of like off the get-go. It’s like, I don’t really see something as impossible ever. I’m more like, “Okay, how will I do that thing?”

DG: That’s an amazing approach to life, I think, that we can all benefit from. Do you any memories before the accident? Like, do you remember walking as a little kid?

SS: That’s a really good question, and I have a couple only so it’s so weird. I don’t know why I don’t have more but I remember my family like my mom and siblings would go roller skating after church.

[ROLLER SKATING ON PAVEMENT]

SS: And so I do have one memory of roller skating, where I remember falling over, and that my skates were so heavy that I couldn’t get back up, so I remember just like eventually someone like skated over and helped me get back up, and then I do have like some memories of like jumping in mud puddles with like tights on. So I remember I got my tights like all muddy. But beyond that, it’s so crazy. I don’t have very many memories walking.

DG: It sounds like, I mean, you were just in this mindset, like that, I am not gonna let this deter me.

SS: I do think that the attitude around me was one that, “This is Susannah, this is the same Susannah that we had in our class, or we had in our home. It’s just now she’s in a wheelchair or she uses a wheelchair.” And I think I just like, that’s what it took was for me to like really believe that I didn’t hear other messages. And I think it helped me just saying, like, “Okay, yeah, this is me. This is the life that I was once in, and now I’m just doing it, and I’ll figure out how to do it slightly differently like if I need to.”

DG: It’s true that Susannah’s community rallied around her after her injury. But there was still one area of life that felt totally inaccessible to her. And we’ll hear about that next, on Sports in America.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

DG: Welcome back to Sports in America. I’m David Greene.

Imagine going through a horrific tragedy. One of the things you need afterward is a support network, right? People who have your back and want to make you feel cared for.
Susanah Scaroni, after that horrific accident as a young child, she had that support network, despite that, though, she didn’t always feel like she fit in.

SS: It really wasn’t until I started basketball with my classmates in third grade that I had my own experience, and I was like, “Okay, here are some things I don’t love.”

DG: Hmm. Yeah, what happened?

SS: When I was on the basketball team, clearly, I was the slowest one to get down the court. And so it really was something where, in order to not have the whole play be done by the time I got there, like they enacted some rules, like we need to pass Susannah the ball one time before we’re going to shoot a basket, so that she’s actually part of the game. But for me, like I knew immediately, “Okay, people are waiting for me to get here. I hate that.” And that was kind of that experience, like, “Okay, I’m so slow here. They’re able to run. They’re having to wait for me. Sport is definitely the time where my wheelchair is getting in my way.” And so it’s just that was gonna be the one thing I wasn’t gonna do, was like sports. (Laughs).

DG: But of course, Susannah didn’t give up on sports quite that easy. She would go on to become an elite athlete, a marathon racer, an Olympian. All it took was one glimpse at sports that are actually accessible for people who use wheelchairs.

SS: It must have been early fall of my fourth-grade year. So one year later, there was just a giant sports expo day in Spokane, and my mom took me to it, and we met the wheelchair basketball team that is based in Spokane, named Para Sports Spokane, and I had a great day. Like I tried so many sports, including their demonstration of basketball. And they had kind of said like, “Hey, we have basketball practice every Friday. We would love for you to come if you can.” And I was like, great, like I’m definitely not going. And then my mom was like, “Okay, awesome. We’ll be there.” So really, I did not want to go. I just remember thinking like, “I don’t want to go to this.” (Laughs)

DG: She was resistant at first because she didn’t want to be embarrassed again, like the last time she tried basketball. But this time would be different.

[MUSIC]

SS: When I got to practice that first day, I was forced to go; everybody was in a basketball chair.

[BASKETBALL DRIBBLING]

SS: We were only focusing on like dribbling. We were doing like drills around the court. We were passing. We ended it by doing some like scrimmage. I realized like this is just basketball. Like finally, like we’re all doing the same thing and we’re not focused on the fact that we’re in wheelchairs. We’re focused on learning how to dribble and how to get the ball up off the ground with our wheel. And I was sold immediately. I was like, this is what I wanted last year. And it’s, this is awesome.

DG: That chance discovery of wheelchair basketball helped Susannah find her true passion.
When did you fall in love with wheelchair racing?

SS: Because I loved basketball so much and met a lot of, so honestly, a lot of the athletes were my same age too, which helped a lot. Like, I pretty much made friends right away. And so I was all in, and when they said track practice would start that spring, I had no idea what wheelchair track was, but just asked my mom if I could go up to Spokane another day of the week for that practice. I’m super fortunate, really supportive mom who was willing to drive me up again. And I remember even that first summer of doing wheelchair track and really wheelchair track at that point. I loved it. I love the fact that I could do…I just liked racing, honestly. Like I loved pushing my racing chair, trying to get faster. I had a lot of joy from doing that.

DG: She loved the sport of wheelchair racing and the community it gave her. She also picked up some meaningful lessons along the way.

SS: My coach growing up, one thing that has really stood out for me that she always would tell me is that the magic happens outside of your comfort zone.

DG: I love that.

SS: And really that is something that I have really reflected on so many times. I have to tell myself that all the time because I have experienced the fact that it’s true so many times and know that whenever something is starting to feel overwhelming or uncomfortable, my reaction is usually to like back off and kind of like avoid. But that always comes to my brain and is like, actually, we need to be open to this because if it’s feeling uncomfortable, there’s for me, a lot of times, I know like, “Hey, there’s probably something that I need to learn in this and some growth.”

DG: Now, if you haven’t actually seen wheelchair racing — I mean, even if you have — you might not totally get how it works. The racers are going so fast it can be hard to grasp the mechanics. So I asked Susannah to break it down for us.

[CHEERING]

BROADCASTER: Away we go in the Women’s Marathon T54…

SS: Unlike a wheelchair, you’re probably used to seeing that someone uses in their daily life. Usually, we call it a day chair. A racing chair has evolved throughout the decades since the sport kind of started, but it’s a long chair. So there’s like five, about five feet long. There’s one wheel in the front, two in the back. And athletes take on kind of like a kneeling position near those back wheels. And so when you’re kneeling, your chest is kind of on your knees. You’re looking at the ground. It puts you in a really aerodynamic position.

BROADCASTER: Absolutely flying!

SS: Unlike sitting in your regular day chair, by kneeling it allows you to kind of like engage more of your core muscles and your shoulders. And that’s been one of the biggest advancements, I think in the sport is like enabling us to engage larger muscle groups from our seating position in the chair.

BROADCASTER: Just look at that power that she has.

SS: But then also we don’t push our racing chair like we do our day chairs. We have racing gloves, and they keep our hands in like a fist. And we have a hand ring that’s attached to the outside of the wheel, and we’re not gripping it. We have our hand in a fist. We’re actually like punching and squeezing in on that hand ring.

BROADCASTER: Susannah Scaroni just crushing it today!

SS: So instead of using your hands, you’re like really getting into your deltoids and your traps and coming down with a lot of force.

BROADCASTER: We’re approaching the finish line here in Central Park!

SS: It’s something that if you’re ever watching a wheelchair race, they go by fast, but all of that stuff is happening and everyone is trying to fine tune how their body is built and how their seating position should maximize the functional ability they have and kind of reduce any of the, you know, the impairments that their disability might cause.

BROADCASTER: Here she comes, Susannah Scaroni will come through.

SS: Those biomechanics can change whether you are climbing uphill, or you’re on a long flat, or maybe you’re on a slight downhill or a slight uphill. So there’s a lot of cool technique involved.

BROADCASTER: Congratulations to the American, Susannah Scaroni!

DG: So a lot of fine-tuning with your hands, and then you have like insanely strong upper body muscles and strength, and core. I mean, does that frame it pretty well?

SS: Yes, definitely! (Laughs) Then you have to add all the strategizing that goes into races that have drafting involved and cornering, and all kinds of cool things like that.

DG: Well, and endurance too. I mean, your bread and butter is distance, right?

SS: Yeah, oh yeah, for sure.

DG: I mean, 5,000 in the Olympics and then marathons.

SS: Yes.

DG: Which I mean, that, just have to say that marathons like, and you said you like hilly marathons.

SS: I do, yeah.

DG: What is it, why do you like massively long distances with a lot of hills? (Laughs)

SS: (Laughs) Okay, well, I think one of the reasons, honestly, when you are on a flat course, you’re going at that high level, but there’s no breaking it up. You’re just like, it’s really mental endurance and physical endurance put together. At least when you have hills, it sort of breaks it up a little bit. So like, you’re either climbing and then maybe you’ll actually get to coast a little bit, but there’s like changes. I think there’s just more interesting changes, and that’s what I like about the hilly courses.

DG: Perhaps not surprisingly at all for the kind of person who enjoys racing marathons with lots of hills, Susannah found early success in her sport.

In the decade before she got to the Tokyo Olympics, she placed first in the Los Angeles Marathon twice, and three times in what’s called Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota. She ended up on the podium a handful of other times in marathons across the US.
So come 2021, after surprising herself by winning that gold medal in Tokyo at the age of 30, Susannah was truly at the peak of her career. She was only seconds off from breaking the world record. With some more training, she knew she could shatter it.
But then, in the blink of an eye, Susannah’s entire racing career was thrown into question.

[MUSIC]

SS: It was two weeks after I’d gotten back. I was training by myself those three days, and on routes that we’ve done a million times, I was on a four-lane road where there’s like two lanes going one direction and two the other, and I was heading east, it was a really bright day. I’m in my racing chair. I’m training alone, and I got hit from behind by a vehicle and ended up well. from what I remember from that moment is I remember pushing, and then all of a sudden, I realized I was going really fast, and I was like, “Okay, this is not good.” I remember like putting my arms up or my arm up to like, like wave my hand and get behind me. And then the next thing I remember is I was on the ground outside of my racing chair.

DG: Ugh.

SS: And there was a man from a vehicle approaching me to see if I was okay.

DG: Was that, were you going fast because the car was pushing you like had had run into you?

SS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

DG: Oh God. Did he just not see you?

SS: Nope, could not see me. I do have like a five-foot flag on me, too. But, so what happened was I ended up getting a burst fracture in three of my vertebrae in my back. And that meant basically I wore a clamshell brace 24 seven for the next four months.

DG: But this just sounds, I can’t imagine having gone through, you know, a horrific accident, a spinal injury when you’re young, like no one should have to go through that. First of all, no one should have to go through that twice. I mean, how do you process that?

SS: Yeah, so I know the fact that I had a clamshell back brace when I was in kindergarten and got another one was not lost on me. I would be like, “Oh my gosh,” I was the strongest I’ve ever been. I still was getting interviews about Tokyo when this happened. So much like disappointment about like having a back injury led immediately to me thinking like oh my gosh I have a back injury and I’m already a wheelchair user like what is my life gonna be like now and then immediately thank goodness the thought of like Susannah like pull yourself together like when you were sitting on the road you were just so grateful to be alive. : I would get into this like spiral, but that always beat out all those thoughts. And it’s true. Like I’m so thankful to be here and to be alive. And it just became something where I was like, I need to focus on just the baby steps to recovery, like whatever recovery is going to be for me. That’s what my focus should be. I should not look back, and I shouldn’t look too far ahead either.

DG: What was the rehab like? I mean, I’m curious if being a wheelchair racer, if a back injury can be like particularly worrisome because you, I mean, you rely on your upper body strength so much in your sport.

SS: Yeah, honestly, when I, so I remember January 1st was when I was able to start pushing again. And, oh my gosh, because we are in a kneeling position. Your back is supporting you. And I could at first, like two weeks for like 20 minutes, is what I could tolerate. And then it wasn’t until probably the next July that I really felt like I could be comfortable after like over 40 minutes of training. And I would train longer, but I could tell, like at the 40-minute mark, I would like prop myself up on the front of my frame just to try to like rest my back a little bit whenever we were like at a stop sign and things like that. But then, yeah, so probably after July of that year was when I really started regaining enough back strength that I could do my sport more comfortably. And that’s just one part of that back strength. My ability to like rotate was something that was really impaired. And so it’s something I work on every day is just like T-spine rotation and trying to re-strengthen my ability to be more symmetric rotating, because that was something that was really impaired for that as well. And it’s a really important skill in wheelchair racing is to be able to rotate. And yeah, it took a lot of time, and again I had to deploy a lot of tools and actually some of the tools I have today are from that period of time because there was so much I’d never felt that way before when I was training. Like I love training. I always feel it’s hard and there’s hard workouts, but like I’ve never felt like I was so fatigued, I guess. And it did kind of take that honesty and say, like, “Okay, if 20 minutes is what I can handle, like that’s awesome. Like, we’ll just keep slowly extending that.” And now looking back, I know like sometimes things take a while, and you really have to be patient. Like I know that sometimes huge things can be fixed if you are patient enough so I deploy that skill now when I have a sickness or an injury, and just really try to focus on like the day-to-day things because I’ve seen them happen in work.

DG: In the midst of a grueling rehab process and an uncertain future, Susannah leaned on something that felt safe.

I’ve read that you have a song, Amazing Grace, that you often turn to.

[AMAZING GRACE ON ACUSTIC GUITAR]

DG: When do you deploy Amazing Grace and how?

SS: That song has really come to the surface because it not only is something that I know by heart, but it does kind of shift my perspective a little bit, too. And I think endurance athletes have that ability that when things are hard and hurting, it’s like, yeah, we could distract our brain. And also, we can like put things in perspective and be like, we can get through this. This is not the end of the world kind of thing. This is a joy you get to do. That song does stand out because it is something that I believe is true. I love the words. They do bring my perspective back into like what I truly value in life. And that’s gotten me through so many hardships. Like the marathon, I think is just an analogy sometimes for life. And my faith and spirituality has really been a big part of that.

DG: In the end, grinding through that injury and trusting herself made Susannah a better racer.
So you think going through that rehab and encountering things that you’ve never had to encounter before has actually made you an even stronger, more successful athlete.

SS: Absolutely, yeah, I think my resiliency has, I didn’t even think it was bad, and it has grown a lot.

DG: Hmm. I just think about your coach saying that the magic happens out of your comfort zone. (Laughs) Like, there’s no better example. sounds like then then that rehab period.
We’re going to spend more time chatting with Susannah Scaroni, coming up next on Sports in America.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

DG: This is Sports in America. I’m David Greene, and today we’ve been spending time with wheelchair racer Susannah Scaroni, who, after winning gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, was hit by a car while she was in her wheelchair on the road training.

Somehow, with all of the resiliance that has shaped her life, she came through that rehab process. And her first race back, after that accident, was the 2022 Boston Marathon. She finished in second place. A month later, she broke the world record for the 5,000-meter wheelchair race on a course in Switzerland.

And by the way, in 2024, she broke the world record again in that same race. So yeah, she has been doing okay.

Even though that accident took her out of racing for almost a year, she says there were actually some unintended benefits to all that time off. For one thing, she got to focus on her career outside of racing.

SS: I have something else I’m passionate about, too, and that is nutrition and working with others to build those tools. And I was like, “Wow, this is pretty nice timing, but I am actually given even more time in my day now to focus on my professional development.”

DG: I wanted to ask you about that part of your life. I read that you actually went through a period of confronting an eating disorder when you were a teenager. I don’t know if it’s comfortable to talk about. If it’s not, I totally understand. But I guess I’m wondering what that experience was like and maybe what some of the low points were.

SS: No, yeah, definitely: Yes. So I remember when I was going into eighth grade, I remember I had a purple racing chair, and it was springtime, and I knew practice was going to be starting. So I remember getting in my chair at home. I was in the living room, and I felt snug, and I just was like, that was the moment where I was like, you can’t just go get a new racing chair, first of all. So it’s something that you have to get measured for, order, and wait usually six months for them to come, and they’re not cheap. The chair I was using back then is probably like a $7,000 chair once it’s all said and done. And it was something that my team had purchased through a grant. So it was like something that I felt so much guilt about that I was, I had done something wrong, that my chair should be fitting me. And it was my body size, and so I remembered thinking like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I allowed this to happen, I need to work on that.”

[MUSIC]

SS: That really began my journey into food restriction and I remembered my mom at the time and I don’t blame her at all in this it’s just she was on a low carb diet and so it was something where at home I was already kind of like learning like there are some like bad foods, and if I just, you know, eat, if I don’t eat those foods, like that’s going to help. But then if I don’t eat very much, that’s going to help. And I remember by the time I was in ninth grade, I could use my chair, but I know now that my period had stopped, but I didn’t associate those two at all. I just knew finally, like I was okay. I was getting smaller. I remember sometimes when I was in bed being so hungry that again, I had these tools in my brain. was like, “It’s okay. Like if you just fall asleep, you won’t be hungry.” And so I remember just like trying everything I could to just remember all I had to do is fall asleep. I started getting up at like four in the morning and working out at our house. And then I would not drive to school anymore. I wanted to walk to school. So we lived at the top of a really big hill, and our school was like down, and they left a bunch of other hills. And so I found out through our tiny town, the most hills that I could push up in my day chair to get to school. And really restrictive about what I would bring for lunches and what I would eat for dinner. And I wouldn’t eat anything for track practice. It got to the point in my junior year of high school that I was at a basketball tournament, and I had lost a lot of tissue, obviously, my body. I think I weighed about 60 pounds. And I just knew I was sick. Like I didn’t feel good. My family, I don’t know, we don’t get, we didn’t get sick very often. And I just didn’t know what was wrong. I was freezing cold. I was craving things like grilled cheese sandwiches, which I hadn’t eaten in who knows how many years. And I remembered I had a doctor’s appointment, and I remembered going downstairs that morning to take a shower, and I couldn’t sit like evenly on the ground. And so I kind of felt and like I asked my mom, and it looked like one, obviously one side of my bum was like swollen. So when I went to the doctor about something else, they took my temperature, and it was 104, and they were like, “Are you feeling okay? You can’t be feeling okay.” And I was like, “No, not really.’ And they ended up doing an emergency surgery because it was this like massively, infected abscess on my bone.

DG: So, the injury, the upset, the illness that put you in the hospital, that wasn’t related to like malnutrition that, but that led to you having an absolute need to build back your body in the right way. Is that right?

SS: So my thought on it is that probably the lack of tissue that I had from losing so much weight, and you know, doing a sport that was like creating a lot of friction in that area, and also probably having no immune function because I was so malnourished, probably those did precipitate that injury.

DG: Okay.

SS: And that led to an entire year of bed rest to try to heal that. It was a time for me to kind of really, without knowing it, nutritionally rehabilitate. So my mom was making all my meals. My mom is amazing, and she knew that I needed to be eating a lot of calories and high-fat foods. And I had no choice in it. And so I remember also like loving it like “Wow, this does taste good.” These foods that I wouldn’t allow myself to have. And the thing is that after a year in my… So in my senior year of January, I started going back to school. I thought that I was done sport. Like, there’s no way I wasn’t training. I wasn’t working out all day long. I was eating a lot of high-fat food. It was gonna be over for me. But I still had a lot of friends on that team. And so I went back to practice, and I still remember being shocked…

[MUSIC]

SS:… about how the fact that I had more energy, and I actually could pay attention, and I could get, I was getting stronger, and I felt good. I remember being so shocked about that, that I was like, I need to study nutrition and find out how is it that something I thought, I really did believe we needed to avoid and restrict, and limit. The opposite of that actually led to me recovering and feeling stronger and getting faster.

DG: Over the last few years, Susannah has been dominating the wheelchair marathon game. She came in first place in the Sydney Marathon and the Chicago Marathon twice, and the Boston Marathon twice, also the New York Marathon twice… I could go on. All the while she’s still been working as a dietician.

How are you balancing things now? I mean, you sound so inspired in your career as a dietitian, but also, I know you’re going to be running in the New York marathon soon, and you’ve won the New York marathon. So it’s not like you have anything to prove on its face anymore, but like, where are your passions, and how are you kind of balancing where you want to go from here?

SS: Right now, I’m really, really in a beautiful spot because I was approached last year about working as a part-time dietician at a local eating disorder clinic, and that’s been an incredible experience for me. And because I’m part-time, I’m able to balance my patient load with training and traveling. So it’s really, and I’m also getting the chance to work in a team of other dietitians, of psychiatry, of our physician, the therapist, and kind of getting this really cool holistic approach to handling eating challenges, whether they’re full-blown disorders or there’s disordered eating and I’ve also been volunteering as the sports dietician for the wheelchair basketball players at the U of I.

DG: U of I, by the way, is the University of Illinois, the same school that Susannah graduated from.

SS: And I really have been enjoying it. Again, it’s something I was nervous about, feeling very overwhelmed, but it has again been something like once you’re in the real world of doing it, it’s like I’ve been able to find the balance to do them all.

DG: Because you don’t want to let go of the racing yet?

SS: Yeah, that’s something I’m just listening to my body on, and I don’t want to let go of it yet.

DG: What is your advice to people who have a loved one who suddenly has an injury and has to be in a wheelchair or something like that?

SS: Having gone through that experience and then having sometimes, you know, in my life had a different experience, and knowing like, “Oh that doesn’t feel very good.” I think being treated like a human being, as maybe hard as that is to realize you’re not doing is what my recommendation is. So knowing that someone might have a different life experience than you. But first, like, honoring the fact that they’re a human being, that means they’re capable of figuring out how to adapt. They are navigating that life experience, so they’re kind of the expert in it. And so I think just being able to let them be as they are and not feeling like you need to make things easier for them. Letting them kind of reach out when they want things different and trusting that they can figure that out. (Laughs) I think that’s really important. And so then, just really, your focus really is treating them like you would treat anybody else with dignity and respect. And then it’s asking if there’s anything you can do that might make things better is never a bad question either. But I think sometimes when it’s like the first thing someone says to you, it can come across like they already expect that things aren’t, that I can’t do things well. And so they’re trying to like fix things for me. And that just comes across kind of not good because I feel like everyone views you immediately thinking like, “Wow, everything must be hard for her. What can I do to help?” It makes you feel like you don’t come across like a strong and independent person.

DG: Don’t lead with that is the basic message I’m hearing.

SS: Don’t lead with that. Exactly.

DG: So Susannah has had this incomparable string of successes as a wheelchair racer. But I also wanted to talk to her about the long view of her life, and there are difficult truths. She knows there are some experiences that she has missed out on by being in a wheelchair.
I’ve heard you talk about that there are moments in your life where you wish that you could walk. What are those moments, and what does it feel like?

SS: Some of those moments are like this year, when we had this really nice snowstorm and my husband and one of my good friends were out shoveling our driveway, and my dog was out playing in the snow with them, and it was one of those times where I was like, I could go out there. But it’s, like, so cold, and my legs do not handle that deep cold very well, but it’s something like I know that I would love to be out there like shoveling the snow and playing in the snow and jumping in the snow, but yet snow for me is like usually not a good combination. So, like just to kind of see you know the people I love, like out enjoying some conditions that are things that like, I feel really limited in to where I wouldn’t be enjoying it like I would want to is one of those times. You know, this weekend I went to a football game with some of my husband’s friends, and where, the seats that they had gotten were, were awesome seats, but they were, like, not accessible. And so the accessible seating was in the student section, and it was right above the band. And I have sat there before. It’s just not quite like the experience that, you know, I was hoping for. So like, honestly, I actually tried out like where my husband carried me down to my seat and it was fine, but it was also one those things like I didn’t want to like drink any water because I was like I don’t want to him that’s carrying me all the way back up to the bathroom and those kind of things like sometimes those little small experiences I’m just like man this would be different if I didn’t have to even think about those things. I still believe right now that, given the opportunity, as long as I didn’t lose what I’ve experienced in my life, I would choose to have the ability to walk and heal my spinal cord.

DG: But you also don’t want to learn, you said you don’t want to lose what you’ve experienced if that’s what had to come with it?

SS: Oh yeah, it would be game over. I would not choose that.

DG: Hmm. Say more about that.

SS: Yeah, I have had an incredible life, and I can think back on only like a handful of the experiences that have come from using my wheelchair. There’s, I’m sure, jillions others that I’ve just kind of gained without even recognizing. And so the people I know in my life, the people I have, so much of my community, which is huge and it’s all around the world, has come in the fact that I use a wheelchair and got to learn about wheelchair sports and got to learn about the importance of nutrition. I think those are the things that mean a lot more to me than, like, going onto the beach.

DG: Susannah, you are such a pleasure to talk to. I really, really appreciate it. And best of luck on the New York Marathon.

SS: Thank you. Thank you. I’m excited. Yeah. Nice and hilly. (Laughs)

DG: Yeah, the way you like it! (Laughs)

Susannah Scaroni, she is getting ready now for the New York City Marathon on November 2.

Next time on sports in America: We’re talking to podcaster, host, and one-of-a-kind media personality Pablo Torre.

PABLO TORRE: Do you think the greatest football coach of all time is deserving of a serious examination that will also make you uncomfortable when you see his man boobs?

DG: We’ll see the world through his unique lens, learn how he uses the absurd to speak truth to power, and hear why he thinks sports are more vital than ever to break through the noise in our divided country.

PT: It’s exactly what I think I am going for here. And really, it’s to melt the cheese on your broccoli. I’m still gonna do the substance.

DG: That’s next time on Sports in America.

This is Sports in America. I’m your host, David Greene.

Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa. Our engineer is Mike Villers. Our tile artwork was created by Bea Walling.

Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia, and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews were originally created by Religion of Sports, with special thanks to Adam Schlossman. You can find Sports in America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeart Radio app — you know, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Executive Producers: Tom Grahsler and Joan Isabella
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Engineer: Mike Villers
Tile Art: Bea Walling

Sports in America is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.

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