Amy Van Dyken

The woman is tall, a fact easily overlooked because she is folded into a wheelchair. Her voice is loud and she laughs often. When she laughs, her black ponytail bounces when she jokes about movements her eyes can see but her body cannot feel.

The woman’s name is Amy Van Dyken, the six-time Olympic gold medalist known for her powerful freestyle stroke, and now more for her powerful personality.  But that’s not what makes her special.

Van Dyken’s swimming career crashed when she was thrown from her ATV in Show Low, Arizona and sent her flying down a six-foot drop. Her husband, former Broncos punter Tom Rouen, found her facedown on the ground and waited by her side as emergency workers arrived. “Talk about PTSD,” she jokes, speaking of Tom. The life-changing news: the former Olympian had severed her spine; her body paralyzed from the waist down.

Van Dyken’s recovery has been remarkable. Her determination rarer than rare. People who know her call it will power. But the question remains. What is it? Are you born this way, or can you learn it? Not a day goes by that Van Dyken doesn’t wake up to train, to get better, or to do one more push up. With every stretch, with every drop of sweat, and every curse word, she begins to answer the question we came here to ask.

Van Dyken is now free from the shell brace that once enveloped her torso and limited her every move. “I’m not wheelchair-bound,” she’s quick to point out. “I live in a wheelchair.” The difference matters to the former competitive swimmer who trains for hours each day to conquer the challenges of adaptive Crossfit by strengthening her upper body — the part she can control.

And because she refuses to think of herself as limited, Amy Van Dyken shows the world through social media what it looks like to recover and to live — not with a disability, but in spite of one.

That’s what makes her special.

As for walking again, Van Dyken does not think that’s in the cards. “But if that becomes possible, I’ll be the first to line up. My name is Amy Van Dyken. And I am Unstoppable!”

And check out and join Amy’s foundation which provides wheelchairs for kids:  http://www.amyvandyken.org/

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