Team USA’s Ezra Frech won two golds in two days at the Paris Paralympics, winning one event he expected to and one he definitely didn’t.
The 19-year-old pulled off a surprise win in the T63 100-meter dash on Monday, coming from behind to grab gold in a photo finish. On Tuesday, he cleared 1.94 meters in the high jump, breaking a Paralympic record and topping the event like he said he would.
He had been counting down to winning gold in the high jump for 100 days on social media. But he wasn’t expecting what happened in the 100 meters.
“I’m quite shocked,” he said after Monday’s race. “I’m still taking it in right now. I was definitely not expecting to go out there and win. I was treating this as a warm-up for the high jump, to get the blood flowing and have a good race.”
So, he got his gold medal a day early, and another on Day 100 to boot.
“Funny enough, I actually beat the countdown. … But don’t think that there is an ounce of complacency in my soul,” he told fans on social media Monday. “Tomorrow night, we complete the countdown, win gold again, and this is in the rearview mirror.”
Ezra Shaw via Getty Images
Frech was born with congenital limb differences and tried out his first running blade at just 4 years old.
“I remember the feeling to this day,” Frech told Sports Illustrated before the Games. “And it was epic, it was so impactful. I remember thinking, ‘Man, I need to experience this all the time.’”
His love of sports blossomed from there. He was 11 when the 2016 Rio Paralympics took place, and decided then and there that he would compete at the Tokyo Games.
“Everyone said I was crazy,” he told SI. “It was statistically unlikely. I mean, an 11-year-old saying he’s gonna make the Games in four years is utterly ridiculous.”
He made it to Tokyo, but didn’t get his podium finish. Devastated, he decided “never again will I let that happen,” even changing his phone background to an image of the medalists with the caption “never again.”
After winning the T63 high jump at the World Para Athletics Championships, he told reporters he still had no plans to change his background, and intends to keep it until he retires.
“Complacency is the killer of greatness. And that’s what I’m going after. So I will never change that,” he told them, according to SI.
