Hot Take: Interview with Kelly Crowley, Paralympic Gold Medalist
In this Hot Take, Jessica Luther interviews Kelly Crowley, a two-sport Paralympic athlete -- winning two gold medals in swimming at the 2004 Athens Games and two bronze medals in cycling at the 2012 London Games. They discuss Kelly's lifelong sport career as well as what her favorite moments, so far, of the Tokyo 2020/21 Paralympics. She also shares which events she's most excited about before the Games wrap up on September 5. Be sure to checkout Kelly's podcast Inside ParaSport, which she co-hosts with sitting volleyball player Katie Holloway.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. Jessica here. Today we have a hot take for you about the Paralympics, which are currently happening through September 5th. I am so thrilled to be joined by gold medalist Paralympian Kelly Crowley. Welcome, Kelly!
Kelly: Thanks for having me on the show.
Jessica: So let's start with some background on you. When did you first get into sports and which sports were they?
Kelly: I've been an athlete my whole life. I actually started in gymnastics when I was a tiny little one. And–
Jessica: Were you one of those bouncy kids, where your parents were looking for an outlet kind of thing?
Kelly: I don't remember being not bouncy, but I do remember liking the springboard under the floor in gymnastics. The floor was my favorite, because I couldn't do some of the other things. I shouldn't say…The trampoline was the best part of gymnastics. But I quickly was not promoted with my peers, and so my parents put me in swimming when I was in second grade. So I've played everything, though. I did all the sports in school. So, you know, basketball, volleyball, softball, all the way through middle school; in high school I played basketball. My family's super athletic and competitive, so I did everything. But then too, from like outdoor sports, you know, backpacking, rock climbing, you name it. Very intense kickball and T-ball games, the whole thing.
Jessica: [laughs] I love it. When I talked to Kristen Duquette last year, who was also a para swimmer, she told me that it was a long time in her life before she saw a disabled athlete. Was that true for you or was that part of your life just growing up?
Kelly: No, I thought I was the only person in the universe with a funny little arm until I learned about the Paralympics when I was 24.
Jessica: 24!
Kelly: Yeah. I had literally never met anyone like me. Which is kind of crazy to think. I have a cousin with a disability, but you know, I never thought of it as someone with a disability because she's my cousin and we just go do stuff together, you know? So, the idea that there was other people like me out there, it just never even crossed my mind, to the point where when I was going to look at colleges, I was looking for a school where I could swim and focus on swimming and hopefully maybe someday make the Olympic team and try and figure out how that would work. But I didn't know about the Paralympics. So I ended up actually quitting all sports altogether in college. And, yeah, did all kinds of other things, until I accidentally found out about the Paralympics at the end of grad school. So, and then my life took a giant detour. [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah. Let's talk about that detour because it's pretty incredible. In 2004, you went to Athens.
Kelly: I did, yeah.
Jessica: And you won two gold medals! That’s incredible. Tell us what events those gold medals were in.
Kelly: Sure. Yeah. So, in Athens I had a whole bunch of individual events, but I also had the privilege of swimming on both of the women's relays. So, I was the butterfly leg in the medley relay and the anchor leg of our 4 x 100 freestyle relay. So, both of our relays won the gold medal, and it was this amazing moment because I got to have my gold medal moment that I had dreamed of ever since, you know, Mary Lou Retton launched her way onto my breakfast table on her Wheaties box. Nope, no sugar cereals in the Crowley household! And you know, I had that moment in my head and that's what I always do I wanted to do, so I got really lucky as a member of the swimming program to be able to like stand on the top step of the podium and hear our national Anthem. And lucky that it happened twice, because the first time the medal ceremony happened so quickly after our race that I was sort of, like, I didn't even have a moment to sit and like to take it in. It was just like throw on your stuff, get on the podium! Okay, go cool down! You know? More races the next day. So when it happened again, I was like, okay, no, I have to slow down and pay attention because this may never happen again.
Jessica: What was that experience like? I mean, I don't know if you can boil it down, but what's it like to go to the Paralympics and compete? And you got to go to Athens, which is such a cool place.
Kelly: Yes. Yes. Athens was amazing. I mean, to go there, you know, the origin of the Olympics. So to be like, wow, I'm back at this starting place. And for me, that was in some ways the starting point of my Paralympic career. So it was all very symbolic. [laughs] But it was a really special experience. I also was stuck in my head a little bit as a swimmer, and so I didn't totally have as much fun with it as I probably could have or should have, because I had put so much pressure on myself to be like, “I'm here and I want to win and I want to…” You know? And you put so much…I tell people, sometimes it's like a wedding. You put so much thought and time and planning and then the day just happens and then it's over and you're like, whoa, where did that go? But you know, it's the Olympics. My favorite part of it was sitting in front of the dining hall and with my pins as a pin trader. So, you know the little lapel pins you can get a souvenir shops, all these places?
Jessica: I did it as a spectator in 1996 in Atlanta, I had the whole pin–
Kelly: Exactly!
Jessica: But I remember buying them and swapping them…
Kelly: If you go into the souvenir stores there's just like walls of pins, right? Walls. The athletes typically get a little package of pins, so we'll go around the village and trade them with all the other athletes. And it's kind of a competitive sport. I mean, I had this one little, tiny, little tea towel that I had stuck them all to, you know, and this guy came over and he was really, really, really determined to take my Barbados pin from me. And he was like, it's super rare, I really want that one! And I was like, no, I'm not trading that one then. [laughter]
Jessica: Nice. Oh, I love it. And then you transitioned very successfully into cycling, right? So you have won two silver medals, I believe, in 2011, at the Paris cycling world cup. How…? This is too ambitious for me, Kelly. [laughs] I was like, she needs to calm down. How did you go from being one of the best swimmers to being one of the best cyclists?
Kelly: Well, I'm lucky in some ways, in that two lucky things happened. I always like to tell people that, you know, being a successful elite athlete is not just pure hard work and dedication. There is some element of luck associated with it. And so for me, I have the physiology of an elite athlete. Like, if you look at my family, we have a lot of really talented athletes. I have cousins that ran in Division I programs in college. I have a cousin who played football in college. We're athletes. So, my VO₂ max is just above average. So, put me in a sport where I can rely on that strength, then I'm going to do okay. The other lucky thing that happened is I met my husband, and I had friends at the time who had bought me a bike, and I was kind of burned out on swimming and I was going out with my guy friends on the weekends, riding out bikes up the hills in the San Francisco Bay Area, which are like some of the iconic climbs in the world. I had no idea that I was riding some of the coolest things in the world when I first got started in cycling!
And they were all like, you're really good at this! You're really good at this! And I was like, nah, I'm going back to swimming, going back to swimming. But then I met my husband and he was like, no, seriously, you're really good at this. And so it did what any aspiring elite athlete does – I just emailed the national team director, [laughter] and I said, I'm thinking about getting into cycling. But the truth is that that's how we do athlete development for Paralympics in the US. We don't have a formal pipeline. There's a huge canyon of questions and advocacy that athletes have to navigate once they've gotten introduced to a sport, and then they want to be on the national team. Like, that middle ground, there is no clear path in any sport, really. I mean, some of the closest ones might be triathlon and rowing because those national governing bodies have really adopted the Paralympians as part of their organization.
Jessica: Wow. And so were you a road racer?
Kelly: Yes. So, I raced professionally with Primal/MapMyRIDE, which was a professional women's team. I was the, I guess, second disabled athlete in the US that I know of, to compete for a professional team. The first is my teammate Greta Neimanas who raced for Peanut Butter & Co/Twenty 12 on the year that I was out. She got picked up by a professional team, which is really cool. You know, for us, we both compete in a category where our hands are the main the main challenge to the function of the bike. And so technology helps us, enables us to compete on a really level playing field, like, our legs work great. [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah. You're clipped in and going. Yeah. Oh, wow. Road racing is so hard. I did triathlons for just a little while, and that part was just…So, good for you! [laughs]
Kelly: We could team up in the triathlon then? Because you could probably do the run no problem, right? [laughs]
Jessica: Well…I am a very slow runner.
Kelly: Oh, I can't help you with that. [laughs]
Jessica: But I really loved swimming.
Kelly: Yes, exactly.
Jessica: So let's talk about the current Paralympics happening in Tokyo. I'd love to hear about what you've been watching and kind of what stories you've been following.
Kelly: Okay. Well I'm kind of a junkie. [laughter] So it's been really challenging actually a little bit because some of the things that I really want to watch are hard to find in the US. Like, I get these little snippets of coverage from the International Paralympic Committee’s Twitter feed, but then the actual video that they've linked to is blocked. It's because of the media rights situation, right? So, a lot of the things that I have paid attention to, or got tuned into, are US athletes. But I know that there are some really cool stories of athletes in other countries that I haven't been able to fully dive into.
Jessica: Sure. There's so much. I mean, I always feel like this when the Olympics, Paralympics roll around.
Kelly: Yeah. I'll be watching things for months on the replays.
Jessica: Yeah. And here I am asking you to narrow it down to a few things, [laughs] which is kind of an unfair ask. Yeah. But let's do it!
Kelly: So, there's a few athletes that I think need to be shouted out, and women especially, because they're breaking ground and they're setting records.
Jessica: I feel like a lot of records have been set!
Kelly: TONS.
Jessica: Okay. That's what it feels like. Good.
Kelly: Yes, tons. I think some of it is the classifications for some of the sports have gotten readjusted over the last quad, and so the athletes that are competing in the categories have different functions than they probably might have had in the past. So, that might be affecting the…But there's been just an astonishing number of records set, which is exciting. But the first athlete that I wanted to shout out is Kylie Grimes of Team GB. She's a wheelchair rugby athlete, and she is the first woman to win gold in wheelchair rugby. And the reason for that is it's a coed sport, right? So, super kudos to her. She's the first woman to ever win gold.
Jessica: Torchbearer!
Kelly: Yes exactly. [laughter] Shoutout! It was a little bittersweet because they beat Team USA and my friend Chuck Aoki had some amazing highlights. So, if you go to NBColympics.com and you look for Chuck and some of his highlights, you're just blown away. It was really exciting. So, both of those teams, totally recommend wheelchair rugby. It's known as murder ball. Let's see, what else? I adore Bebe Vio. She's an Italian wheelchair fencer, who is kind of the star of Rising Phoenix, which is a documentary on Netflix. And you don't have to have Netflix during the Paralympics to watch Rising Phoenix because Netflix is showing it for free on YouTube through the end of the closing ceremonies. So, check it out.
Jessica: Yeah. Get on that.
Kelly: I Absolutely adore her. She, spoiler alert, won gold for the second games in a row. So that was really exciting. There is a Venezuelan sprinter, Lisbeli Vera Andrade, who was in a photo finish. She won gold with a lean at the end! And the reason that I'm super excited about this though is because of what she said about like how she was bullied so badly in middle school – which I also understand, experienced! – and she said, “I would lock myself in my house and say I didn't want to go out.” And then she discovered sport and she was selected for the para Pan-Am games. And she said, “It was a demonstration that what people said about me was a lie.” And so for her, sport changed absolutely everything. So, to have her get to have that triumphant moment of being in a super tight race, leaning for the finish line and winning the gold, it's just like, yes, that is the kind of Olympic glory that we want, right?!
Jessica: Right, right. Yes. Oh, you just describing that makes my heart beat faster. I love it.
Kelly: Exactly. So, there's been a bunch of other things like that. Teresa Pereales is a Spanish swimmer who's been swimming for many, many years. She won her 27th Paralympic medal the other day, like, that’s so many medals.
Jessica: I’m sorry, what!?
Kelly: [laughs] Exactly.
Jessica: That’s too many. Where do you put all those? Holy moly.
Kelly: Right? You would lose track.
Jessica: I saw Tatyana McFadden, won like her 19th, and I thought that that was excessive. 27. Wow!
Kelly: Right? There've been some really exciting finishes too. So, my sort of top three finishes are in the men’s 100 meter with the T64 category, which are leg amputees, featured Jonnie Peacock, who’s the star of the London 2012 games. He's like a legend, right? So he was in a photo finish for a medal. There was an incredibly fast gold medal time, 10:76, which is–
Jessica: Wow!
Kelly: It would take me twice as long to run that far. So, I find that really impressive. And then Costa Rica won their first ever Paralympic medal in that event as well. So, recommend hunting that one down on the NBC platform. There was a really good race featuring Daniel Romanchuck, who is like the Michael Phelps/Katie Ledecky of wheelchair racing in the US. Super dominant. And so his 400 meter race was like a come from behind finish. He wasn't even…You’re like, there's no way he can win this. And then it was basically a photo finish, a very close race. That was fun to watch.
Jessica: And he won?
Kelly: He won. Yeah. But he didn't look like he was gonna win. So, that was really exciting.
Jessica: I love that.
Kelly: And then my favorite favorite finish though has to be – and again, I'm going to spoil it – Kendall Gretsch chasing down Lauren Parker of Team GB in the women's wheelchair paratriathlon. I mean, she was a minute, a minute and a half down, and had this like surge in the last, I don't know, 50 meters before the line. And you were just like, whoa, where did that speed come from? And she nicked her right at the line and won the race.
Jessica: Wow. That's a lot of time to make up and that distance. Wow. I’m going to go look that up.
Kelly: Yeah. It was super impressive. There's a little five minute highlight if you want to watch it, the short version of it. So anyways, those are my highlights. And also I love sitting volleyball, because I have a very good friend, Katie Holloway, who is on the sitting volleyball team, and they are in the hunt still for their medals. So, I guess I will be following that closely.
Jessica: All right. Shout out to Katie. Yeah. So, can you tell us…So, we have just a few days left at this point, September 5th. Which…How are we into September? But a few days. So obviously sitting volleyball – are there other things that listeners should be paying attention to, do you think.
Kelly: Oh man.
Jessica: All of it? [laughs]
Kelly: All of it, turn it on, on all of your devices and just stream it, because we need the platforms and we need NBC to see that people are watching it! But yeah. No, I think exciting things that are coming up…You guys did a great little shout out on canoe kayak, which, I have to be honest, I've never ever seen canoe kayak, but just based on your preview of the Paralympics, I'm like, I can't wait for canoe kayak to get started!
Jessica: All right, all right!
Kelly: So, I'm excited for that. Badminton! I don't know who the dominant athletes are in badminton, but I will be definitely watching it because I've seen little snippets of competitive matches and it's a great spectator sport. Super fast action. It's kind of mind boggling. Their cat-like reflexes–
Jessica: like so interesting, because like with ping pong, when I watch table tennis, it's almost like watching hockey – I have trouble following the ball. But with badminton because of the way it floats, you can. It's like both fast paced and I can still see the birdie, like yeah, give it a moment to breathe as you're watching it. [laughs] Yes.
Kelly: So I'm looking forward to that. Five-a-side soccer, really excited for that. Again, super fast paced game. Like, I'm not good at soccer, so I have mad respect for that. And then the medal rounds of basketball and volleyball, the women's sitting volleyball for the US especially. Ad then just I love basketball – in general that's probably my favorite sport to play, and it actually translates really well to wheelchair basketball.
Jessica: Nice! Well, thank you so much for filling us in and giving us tips moving forward. Before we get out of here, I do want to ask you a pretty open-ended question, and you can just take this wherever you'd like. But since I have you here, what would you like our listeners to know about the Paralympics or para athletes that they might not know and should? I feel like that's is probably hours and hours of an answer, but I wanted to give you a chance here because we just don't hear enough about it just in general.
Kelly: Wow. That's a really great question, and I could probably say a lot. I think two things: one is for like the super novice audience, which I don't know how many of those folks you have listening to your podcast, but is that, you know, it's the Olympics for people with disability. I think a lot of times even Paralympians think, when people with disability are first starting out in sport, they go, well, I'm training for the Paralympics. And they don't really know what that means, you know? But it means you're going to do what the Olympians do, which is you're going to spend 20 hours a week perfecting your craft and you're going to rely on a little bit of luck and a lot of biology and you know, we all have a little bit of freak in us. [laughter] Just a little bit outside of the standard deviation.
So, I think that's one thing. And then the second thing is that we actually do need help in that we are still building a movement. We are still, you know…Ad it's largely a grassroots movement and we need everyone to go talk about us, tell your neighbors, “Hey, I saw this on TV!” Ask five people to turn on the coverage. We need all the fans that we can get because the institutions that make decisions about how funds get spent need to understand that people do love us. [laughs] And I know they do because London showed us that. And you know, for me, the super cool thing about Paralympics is that it changes…It actually does change lives for the better. And that visibility matters. One of the Team USA Paralympians just posted something on his Twitter feed today that was a letter that a Japanese family sent him saying, you know, we'd never seen anyone like our son doing anything, and then we saw a highlight of you, and we bought tickets and we can't come, but we're watching you on TV, you know? And like that family would never have known what was possible for their child without the Paralympics. So for that reason alone, we need more visibility. We need everybody talking about us. So, go talk about us! [laughs]
Jessica: That’s great. And you do talk about the Paralympics and para athletes on a podcast, correct? Tell us about your podcasts. Everyone can go subscribe right now.
Kelly: Okay. Sure. Yes. So Katie Holloway and I started a podcast called Inside ParaSport. We've been a little bit on hiatus over the last year because we both been handling a lot. She's been training for Tokyo. We talk about all things Paralympics. We interview athletes and give them a platform to tell their stories, and we talk about some of the sticky things in Paralympics, like classification and all kinds of other stuff. Classification is the biggie, though.
Jessica: Yeah. Say the name again?
Kelly: Oh, Inside ParaSport.
Jessica: Okay, Inside ParaSport. Everyone – pause this, go subscribe, come back. And then I wanted to ask finally, where can our listeners find more media on para athletes and para sports?
Kelly: The official IPC, International Paralympic Committee media channels are probably the best. Channel Four out of the UK does phenomenal…They do a phenomenal job. It's not always available in other territories, but if you're listening from abroad, check that one out. In the US, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee is a good place to go for coverage. And then this year, NBColympics.com, they're streaming at a historic number of hours on NBC sports. The replays are on the platform. If you have Hulu, that counts as your cable provider, so you can get access to the whole thing if you have Hulu.
Jessica: I will say, shoutout to Lindsay who is just so taken by Paralympics TikTok. She said she just will spend hours there. [laughs] So like, you can just start on the Paralympics TikTok, like the main Paralympics account, and just go from there. But she said she just was like, four hours later… [laughter] She was so wrapped up in it. So I will say that there are other spaces too that are really fun.
Kelly: That's right. Follow the athletes directly. You know, athletes are always good, and we're all networked with each other. So once you follow one of us, you can find a bunch of us.
Jessica: All right. Well, thank you, Kelly. We really appreciate you being on Burn It All Down.
Kelly: Thanks you guys for having the best podcast and bringing Paralympics into the conversation.
Jessica: This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen, subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn for show links and transcripts. Check out our website, burnitalldown.pod.com. You can also find a link to our merch on our Bonfire store. And thank you as always to our patrons. Your support means the world. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. Burn on, and not out.