Archdeacon: Gold for Grace -- Norman wins paralympic triathlon in Paris

A few strides from the finish line, fans held out an American flag for her. She veered over, grabbed it and draped it over her shoulders, then held it above her head.

As she burst through the blue finish-line banner that proclaimed “Paris 2024,” she held it over her head, as well.

Feeling the enormity of what she’d done — it was her second gold in the event and the fourth Paralympic medal of her career — she bent down with the flag covering her head like a veil and began to weep.

The 26-year-old Norman — who grew up on a farm outside Jamestown and graduated from Xenia Christian High School and Cedarville University — won this time in dominant fashion.

Claire Cashmore of Great Britain won the silver medal, finishing at 1:05.55, 75 seconds behind Norman.

Fellow Brit Lauren Steadman — who had edged Norman for paratriathlon gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and a year later served as a bridesmaid in Grace’s wedding — finished third at 1:06.45.

“It’s incredible,” Norman told an NBC reporter after the finish. “Going from gold to silver back to gold definitely made me work really hard in the eight years (at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016) since the last gold.

“I’m ecstatic!”

Although she’s married to jazz trumpeter Evan Taylor and now lives in Bloomington, Ind., when she’s not travelling the world competing, Norman returned to the Miami Valley for her final two months of training for Paris.

She lived with her parents, Tim and Robin, on their 23 acres and did her biking on the surrounding country roads.

She swam at the Xenia YMCA and did open water training at Caesar Creek. She ran at Cedarville University under the tutelage of Jeff Bolender, the Yellow Jackets women’s cross country coach who still helps in her training.

She got some of her prosthetic work done at Optimus Prosthetics on N. Dixie Drive in Dayton and was tended to by chiropractor Derek Black at the Advanced Medical and Wellness Center in Beavercreek.

Monday’s race was far different than Tokyo, which was conducted under the lingering cloud of the COVID pandemic. The Paralympics had pushed back a year to 2021 and even then, spectators were not allowed.

In Paris, Norman had a vocal cheering section of 21 people, including her parents, older sister Bethany and her husband.

Several other family members were friends were there, even Ryan and Suzi Finkenbine, who lived across from the Normans in Morgantown, West Virginia, more than two decades ago and now live in Illinois.

“I tried to keep my cool most of the run until the last lap when I knew I pretty much had it,” Norman said. “Then I started picking out my family, my husband and my coaches.

“I gave them a little smile, but didn’t expend too much energy. But I’m happy that we didn’t have the Tokyo (situation.) It meant the world to me to come across the finish line and have the American flag.

“Oh, it’s just incredible!”

With the triumph, Norman has forever cemented her transfiguration from goats to gold .

A year before she stunned everyone as the surprise 18-year-old gold medal winner in Rio — edging Steadman who was a Paralympic Games’ veteran as a swimmer — Norman won the Goat Showmanship championship at the Greene County Fair.

Growing up she, like her two sisters, was in 4-H and raised Alpine goats, Hampshire/Yorkshire pigs and chickens.

The work ethic she learned on the farm paid off in her sports career.

Although born with an amniotic band disorder that cost her her lower left leg, right big toe and nearly her right leg, she competed — wearing a J-shaped, carbon fiber Cheetah Flex blade on her prosthetic — and won against able-bodied athletes in high school and then ran track and cross country at Cedarville, an NCAA Division II school.

As a para-triathlete, Norman has competed all around the world and won four world championships. She’s made the podium in 41 of her 44 career races and won 29 times.

In the months before this race, she had struggled with some prosthetic leg issues and hadn’t competed for several months. Then Sunday the race was postponed for a day because of water quality issues in the Seine River where competitors would swim.

Sunday night her parents and a big group of family and friends went to dinner on the Rue de Honore in Paris and then held a group prayer gathering for her on the street afterward.

“God was the master of this,” Robin Norman texted after the race. “And Grace is the Gold medalist!”

Once Norman caught her breath after the finish, she FaceTimed her mom and gushed:

“We did it!”