Life dealt Teresa Perales (Zaragoza, 48 years old) a blow when she was 19 years old and was diagnosed with neuropathy – a disease of the nervous system – that left her without mobility in her legs. She had to leave the karate mat, the sport she practiced, and began swimming. In swimming she found a purpose, an escape valve, almost a way of life. “What does a pool mean to me? Phew! The most absolute freedom you can imagine. It is my environment, the area in which I am independent again and in which I feel most dignified, and even more so at this moment,” says Perales, winner of 27 Paralympic medals, icon of the international Paralympic movement and winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports in 2021.
The swimmer will try to surpass Michael Phelps’ 28 medals at the Paralympic Games in Paris this summer (from August 28 to September 8) after losing the mobility of her left arm in April of last year. The neuropathy caused her axillary nerve to be damaged and she began to suffer continuous episodes of spasticity (spasms caused by muscle hypertonia). Now she wears a splint to keep her arm more relaxed, but she can no longer use it to swim. “It was the hardest thing, but I take it well, with dignity and humor,” she says. “It was like living with a new disability again, or like having one again, because with all the time I spent in a wheelchair I had already assimilated it, and for me it was not having a disability. I was always independent, I hadn’t needed help for almost anything for many years, but now there are times when I do: to get dressed, to get into bed… Psychologically, losing that independence is very hard,” she explains.
Perales will compete in three events at the Games. She will swim the 100m backstroke in the S2 category (her new physical disability) on August 29, the 50m backstroke in S2 on the 31st and the 100m freestyle in S3 on September 3. But to be in Paris this summer she first had to get rid of shame, a feeling she had not suffered in a pool for decades. “I had a vision of my body image, and suddenly one of my arms didn’t work. I saw how others looked at me, and I felt that sad look again from those who had seen me swim with both arms. It reminded me so much of those who saw me walk and suddenly stop doing it, that it was very hard for me. It is one of the most difficult looks to assimilate when they do it with sadness, with pity,” she recalls. She got rid of that feeling by training and competing, by jumping into the pool again and again. “Whoever wants to feel sorry for me, let them feel sorry for me, but I am proud of how I am doing, and above all of not giving up. It was me who owed it most to not give up out of shame, and it came naturally to me because I wanted to go to the Games, and to be able to go I had to compete and get all the nonsense out of my system,” she adds.
Alvaro Garcia
After getting rid of the embarrassment, the second essential step to be able to be in the French capital came: deprogramming her way of swimming, which was with two arms, to learn to do it with one. “The thing is that in my head I kept thinking about swimming with both. At the World Championships (in 2023) I was obsessed with using the left one. I thought that miraculously that click was going to happen and that I would be able to do it. It didn’t happen, obviously, and the race went terribly for me,” recalls Perales, who then returned for the first time from a championship without a medal.
Since then, the swimmer from Zaragoza, author of a book on personal growth (The strength of a dream) and immersed for many years in supporting different social causes, she has advanced so much that she is in a position to win a medal at least in the 50m backstroke. “I turned the page like when I lost mobility in my legs. I couldn’t stay in regret, I had to think about what I could do, which is move my right arm, and every day I try to do it better and take advantage of it in the water despite the difficulty of not moving my legs, or an arm, or having a rudder, and many times I hit the lane. I had to automate movements, but I did it,” she celebrates.
The Paris Games are going to be special for her because of her attempt to beat Phelps, whom she met last November in Madrid, but also because the medals bear an original fragment of the Eiffel Tower, where her husband proposed to her exactly 20 years ago. “There is that romantic story and I would love to be able to take it home,” she admits. If she wins a medal, even if she wins two, Perales says she does not rule out reaching Los Angeles 2028 because she does not want to retire as long as her body holds out and she can continue swimming with her right arm. “Also, if I get the medal in Paris it will be very epic. It could even be a movie on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Movistar, whatever they want. Really, wasn’t what I had enough? That’s enough, eh?” she says with dignity and humor while bursting into laughter.
Alvaro Garcia
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