Diehard South African swimmer takes the 'dis' out of 'disabled'

Growing up participating in national swimming tournaments, Shireen Sapiro never dreamed she'd ever compete as a disabled athlete. Indeed, five years after a speedboat propeller completely cut off her leg and shattered her pelvic girdle into nine pieces - and one year after she won a gold medal at the Beijing Paralympics - the 18-year-old is blurring the borders between "able-bodied" and "disabled." Sapiro, who hails from Johannesburg, carried her country's flag Monday night at the Maccabiah, where next week she will participate in five swimming events.

"I'm the only disabled swimmer competing against able-bodied athletes," she told Haaretz Tuesday while she and her teammates toured Jerusalem's Old City. "When I kick in the water, one of my legs doesn't move at all, so I'm at a disadvantage. But my times are not too bad; I think I could maybe make a final. I'm just going to do my best."

In a crowd of about 25 teenage girls, Sapiro, who is in Israel for the first time, doesn't stand out at all. Despite the accident, which paralyzed her left quadriceps, it's hard to notice a difference between her and her peers. "Everything was sewn back together with plates and screws," she says. "I am walking with my hamstrings, bum and stomach muscles."

Today she walks, runs and taps her foot to music emanating from souvenir shops almost exactly like her teammates. That's also why she doesn't like to think of herself as disabled. "I don't really get the words 'able' and 'disabled,'" she says. "People call me disabled but I could probably do anything better than any given able-bodied person on the street."

Yet Sapiro's story is undoubtedly unique. A talented athlete from early on, she swam for South Africa's junior national team and at Olympic trials. But one day in April 2004 she fell from her jet skies and a passing speedboat "literally sliced my body in half."

That accident in South Africa threatened to end her career, but she says she never considered giving up. After all, swimming was a key element of her rehabilitation. "I never really thought I'd stop swimming," she says. "I always wanted to carry on no matter what."

While throwing in the towel was never an option, the years it took to find her old form - and even surpass it - weren't easy. Because she didn't want to be considered disabled, she started to swim in competitions for able-bodied athletes.

Her first tournament after the accident was a "disaster," she recalls. "People I used to beat by miles killed me in the pool. That was probably the only time I asked myself if it's really worth going through all the pain. But I worked at it, I got better and now I beat them again."

In the meantime, however, Sapiro overcame her dislike for competitions of disabled athletes. "People always asked me why I didn't do it, so eventually I sucked it up and did it," she says. "At the first gala I swam as a disabled athlete I broke a South African record. I thought that maybe I had the potential to become a world champion."

A few months later she competed for South Africa at the 2008 Paralympics in the S-10 category - the least severe kind of disability. She won gold in the 100m backstroke and broke the world record. (Sapiro now holds five world records in that discipline.)

Sapiro is already looking forward to London 2012 - where she plans to compete both at the Paralympics and the regular Olympics. "I think I definitely have the potential to go to the regular Olympics," she says. "It's just going to take a lot of hard work. If I want something bad enough, I go out and get it."