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Evan Austin | Tokyo 2020 Olympic Profile

Team USA para swimmer Evan Austin walks through his career as a paralympian and explains why the paralympics are important to show the world just how resilient humans can be.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

EVAN AUSTIN: I'm a two-time Paralympian. I swam for Team USA in 2012 and 2016 in Rio. I train at Purdue University here in West Lafayette, Indiana. And I'm a world champion from 2019. That's a career highlight of mine, looking to maybe bring home some hardware from Tokyo. So I'm really excited and training is going well.

Paralympics it's an important movement. I think the trajectory of this movement is only going forward and it needs to. I think the more people that get a taste, the better society will be. I think, when we start to understand that people with impairments are part of our country. They make up a decent amount of us. And we're just people, we just love to compete.

The Olympics are obviously a significant sporting event by themselves. They stand alone as of what the world can do when it comes together. And I feel like this is going to have just an extra pinch of sugar and spice on it just because the world had to come through this whole thing together. And now, we get to put not only Team USA athletes, but everyone's athletes on display and just show the world that we're a resilient species, the humans are, and we will come through on the other side. And it will make it happen and it's going to be great.

And so, I'm just looking forward to competition and just the whole thing happening by itself. I think that's enough to get any athlete that was close to that opportunity last year out of bed every morning.