Paralympic swimmer Jasmine Greenwood will head to her second games in Paris in a few short weeks. She was just 16 when she took home a silver medal from Tokyo in the 100-metre butterfly. While she is aiming for a podium finish, she says swimming has changes her life in more ways than one.
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00:00When I was six, I acquired a brain injury, which was actually through appendicitis that
00:08became septic, which is pretty uncommon.
00:11Yeah, as a six-year-old, I ended up with two strokes in the right side of my brain, which
00:16affects the left side of my body.
00:18And since then and now, I've suffered with left side weakness and a tremor in my left
00:24hand and leg.
00:25Swimming at the time was probably harder than swimming, and it was a way for me to be able
00:31to move without pain and also make friends with other people who'd been through similar
00:37things or completely different things as well.
00:39Yeah, I just found my passion for it.
00:41I found that I enjoyed doing it and I liked competing, and then I started being good at
00:45it, and yeah, I've just never stopped.
00:48So when I'm swimming in the pool, I'm competing against people who are with similar conditions
00:53such as cerebral palsy or acquired brain injuries as well, but also people who are
00:58missing limbs like their foot and their hand.
01:01So sometimes people get a bit confused as to why, oh, why is she competing against someone
01:04with no hand?
01:06But it's actually, that's how it's made fair, because my level of impairment is the same
01:11as somebody missing a hand.
01:16The attention on Paris is going to be like never before, especially with COVID with Tokyo.
01:21A lot of people kind of had to watch it from TV because it was all over TV, and that's
01:27why we got a lot of views.
01:28But I think this time people are actually going to be genuinely really interested, as
01:32they should be.
01:33It's going to be great, and yeah, I think it's just going to continue growing, which
01:37is exactly what the sport needs and deserves.