The backstory:
Hunter was born with a condition called fibular hemimelia, or underdevelopment of the fibula (one of the two primary bones in the lower leg). Both legs were amputated below the knee before his 1st birthday. He first gained athletic renown in 2013 as a 13-year-old football player but switched to sprinting in high school. Hunter blossomed under coaching from former Brazilian sprinter Joaquim Cruz, becoming a state champion sprinter in 2016 and, later that year, a Paralympic medalist.
Away from the track:
Hunter is a gifted YouTube creator. He and his girlfriend, sprinter Tara Davis, have more than 100,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel.
In his own words:
“A race for me is less than a minute. It’s such a small amount of time where I’m by myself, on my own, racing. The rest of it is support and coaching and all these people behind me. Only about 40 seconds of it is my own effort.”
“I would be lying if I said I was going to the Paralympic Games to take second or third. The end goal is to win. That’s why you go into every race. If you didn’t have the thought or the belief that you didn’t have a shot at winning, there’s no real point in running the race. But after the race, when we go back and look at the outcome, what matters to me is what I put into it. And if I put in the best effort I could and I prepared every way I could and I didn’t come out with the gold medal, that’s alright. Because I did everything in my power to put myself in the best position to win.”
Further reading:
ESPN: “A Pandemic Can’t Stop Hunter Woodhall”
Amplitude: “Hunter Woodhall’s New Legs”
Team USA page
IPC Page
