Although she’s the most-travelled and most-decorated athlete now competing out of the Miami Valley — she’s a medal favorite in the triathlon at the 2024 Paralympic Games which open today in Paris — and she’s now married to jazz trumpeter Evan Taylor and living in Bloomington, Ind., Grace spent June and July back where it all began.
For the past eight years, she’s trained all over the world, but she did the last of her Paris prep while living with her parents.
“She likes to train where she’ll have similar weather and terrain to where she’ll be competing,” Robin said. “That’s why she was in Miami — for the heat and humidity — before she did the World Championships in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates in 2021).
“Where we live is similar to what she’ll have in Paris.”
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Grace also needed work done on the prosthetic legs — one for biking, one for running — that she’ll use in Paris, and Optimist Prosthetics on North Dixie Drive in Dayton has handled much of that in the past.
“She also worked with chiropractor Derek Black of the Advanced Medical and Wellness Center in Beavercreek,” Robin said. “They handle all kinds of athletic support services, things like deep massage, dry needling and cupping.”
Grace swam at the Xenia YMCA, where Robin is a part-time lifeguard in addition to working as a child psychologist with Scioto Paint Valley Mental Health and helping teenagers at the Miami Valley Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Xenia.
For open-water swimming — the paratriathlon swim in Paris will be in the Seine River — she swam at Caesar Creek Lake State Park.
Her cycling was done on the country roads around Jamestown, and for running, she went to Cedarville University, from which she graduated with a nursing degree in 2020 and where her dad is a mechanical engineering professor.
At Cedarville, she was mentored by the Yellow Jackets women’s cross country coach, Jeff Bolender, who remains one of her running coaches along with her primary coach, Greg Mueller from South Bend.
“The Miami Valley certainly had a hand in sending Grace to Paris this year,” Robin said. “She had everything she needed right here.”
Thomas Wolfe’s 1940 novel “You Can’t Go Home Again” is about a successful author who wrote about his hometown but found he couldn’t return there because his family and friends were angered by his candid depictions of them.
Grace faced no such dilemma — “she brings a lot of life, a lot of energy, a lot of sunshine into our house,” Robin said — and left in early August for a pre-Games camp in Vichy, France. She moved to Paris last week.
The triathlon is Sunday. With Paris six hours ahead of Ohio, her competition begins at 4:20 a.m. Dayton time. Peacock will have live coverage, and NBC likely will replay it in the evening.
She was selected as one of the network’s media athletes for Paris and has appeared in commercials for the Games.
She also has some high-profile sponsors, including Xfinity/Comcast and Panasonic.
Although just 26, she’s one of the most accomplished athletes on Team USA.
She’s won events on five continents, has won a record four World Championships and has three medals from her past two Paralympic Games.
She stunned everyone as an 18-year-old and won gold in the paratriathlon in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2016, and a day later won a bronze medal in the 400 meters in track.
At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she won silver in the paratriathlon. Because of COVID restrictions, those Games were pushed back a year and didn’t allow spectators.
That’s why the Norman family is looking forward to Paris.
A contingent of 25 family members and friends is headed to France to join Grace’s parents, her sister Bethany and her husband Evan, who’s finishing his PhD in music at Indiana University, toured with Frankie Valli and just was part of a jazz cruise out of Italy.
When Grace got to Vichy, she received a care package of photos and letters from friends and family and people from Ohio who helped her prepare this summer. There was also a daisy medallion that Robin sent to represent the sunshine she said Grace adds to their lives.
Overwhelmed by the support from home, Grace messaged back:
“Thanks momma! I appreciate it. I’ll definitely reserve a few hugs for you, dad, Beth and Evan!! I’m so excited to have you and everyone there…Love you!!”
Refusing to be slowed
A congenital amniotic band disorder at birth cost Grace a portion of her left leg, her right big toe and nearly her right leg.
Born to athletic parents — her mom ran track at Purdue, her dad swam and did triathlons — there initially were questions whether she’d ever be able follow suit.
Her parents didn’t shelter or coddle her, though it’s doubtful they could have.
“At 11 months, she was toddling around the house on the stub of her leg, and she got some goose eggs from falling, but that never stopped her,” Robin said. “Her whole life, she’s never accepted limitations. With her, it’s always been keep charging ahead.”
During a soccer match in third grade, Grace’s prosthetic foot cracked. Robin told the coach to duct tape it and let her keep playing.
“When I think about Grace, it’s not that she grew up with prosthetics. It’s just the opposite. Prosthetics grew up with her,” Robin said. “When she grew up, they were just coming out with the idea of flexible feet.
“The prosthetics when she was a toddler were really made for boys. She couldn’t even wear a little heel like you’d have on a girl’s Sunday shoe.
“At about 8 years old, she got her first prosthetic with a split toe. For the first time, she could wear sandals. And it had toenails, so like any girl, she wanted to paint them.”
At Xenia Christian High School, Grace shed her prosthetic leg and won the Metro Buckeye Conference 500 freestyle swim competition against able-bodied boys.
As a junior she was the first disabled girl in Ohio high school history to make the podium at a state track meet. Running with a J-shaped, carbon fiber Cheetah Flex foot she first got two years earlier, she finished eighth in the 1,600-meter run.
Once at Cedarville University, she competed against NCAA Division II cross country and track athletes who were able-bodied.
At the end of her college career, she won a bronze medal at the USA Triathlon Club Collegiate National Championships in Malibu, California. Competing at double the paratriathlon distances, she finished third in a field of more than 200 able-bodied athletes.
Her early victories, her diverse athletic talents and her always-beaming smile and gracious ways have often helped open doors for her.
She won an ESPY, was honored by President Barack Obama at the White House and was invited to sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
NBC embraced her for these Games and brought her to Los Angeles for photo and video shoots, then sent her to a New York City to meet the national press at a media summit.
Grace now uses that platform she’s earned.
“I want to see my legacy as furthering the Paralympic movement,” she recently told WDTN-TV reporter Adrienne Oglesby. “I want it to show my passion for sports, for women’s sports, and to raise the bar for amputees and amputees in sports and disability sports
“I’d love to be seen for my speed, not my disability.”
A continuing rivalry
Over the past eight years Norman’s top competitor has been Great Britain’s Lauren Steadman, who, at 31, is five years older and has more Paralympic Games experience.
Steadman competed as a swimmer in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing and in 2012 in London. She switched to the paratriathlon for the 2016 Games in Rio De Janeiro and was considered a favorite.
Just 18, Grace was the youngest of Team USA’s 267 athletes and one of only two American athletes competing in two sports.
Steadman was leading in Rio until Grace ran past her on the final 5K run.
Grace’s effort stunned everyone, not just because of her age, but because she’s at a disadvantage in the PTS5 competition.
In the Paralympic swim, Steadman and fellow Brit Claire Cashmore — who’s won nine Paralympic Games medals as a swimmer and triathlete — both are missing hands and can simply run from the water, jump on their bikes and pedal away.
Grace, who wears no prosthetic for her swim, is carried out of the water and then must sit down, dry off her upper leg and then fit on her biking leg. That takes time, as does another switch of prosthetics for the final run.
In Tokyo, a tiring Grace was leading in the biking portion when she was passed by Steadman and then couldn’t catch her in the run, usually her strongest discipline.
Grace took silver, but is remembered most for the golden moment that followed. As soon as she crossed the finish line, Grace went to Steadman and hugged her until they melted down onto the track, then parted ways with a fist bump.
On camera afterward, Grace praised Steadman and said she was happy for her.
A year later Grace had Steadman as one of the bridesmaids in her wedding.
Last year Steadman had planned to retire, skipped the World Championship and wasn’t invited to Paris for the Paralympic test event last fall.
But as she stood alongside Grace’s parents that day and cheered her rival to victory, Steadman decided not to retire and to try to defend her gold in these Games.
Neither Steadman nor Grace has raced this season.
As Grace was dealing with changes to her prosthetics, Steadman was battling long COVID that brought on a heart condition.
While this may be Steadman’s swan song, Grace plans to compete at the Los Angeles Games in 2028, and after that comes Australia in 2032.
To Tim Norman, more important than where his daughter’s career will take her is how she has continually gotten there:
“Through all of this, I’ve never seen her lose her faith. I’ve never seen her lose her joy for life and or her enthusiasm for her sport.
“That doesn’t mean I haven’t seen her cry about those things — it doesn’t mean I haven’t seen her struggle — but she always comes out the other side and ends up where she should be.”
Early this summer, that meant being back home in the Miami Valley.
Now it means going for gold in Paris.
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