Unusual People Who Play Professional Sports
Summary
Top 20 Unusual People Who Play Professional Sports. In spite of their disabilities, they’re known for their talent, team contributions, and personalities. They are the real-life superheroes in the world because of how gracefully they turned to become professionals. Without […]
Top 20 Unusual People Who Play Professional Sports. In spite of their disabilities, they’re known for their talent, team contributions, and personalities. They are the real-life superheroes in the world because of how gracefully they turned to become professionals. Without looking to others, these people only focused on themselves, and at the end of the day, they are the winners. We will show you the top 20 unusual people who play professional sports.
Video: Unusual People Who Play Professional Sports
Kanya Sesser
This one unique person was born without legs and abandoned by her parents, but Thai-born Kanya Sesser neither curses her destiny nor lets her disability stop her from living life her own way. The 26-year-old celebrity is determined to lead an ordinary life. Instead of a wheelchair, Sesser, whose motto is “No Legs, No Limits,” uses a skateboard to get around and also walks on her hands. Her talents include sports, acting, modeling, and serving as a motivational speaker. She is a professional skateboarder and surfer and has appeared in “Hawaii Five-0,” “Walking Dead,” and “The Fear of the Walking Dead.” Oh, and she also models lingerie and sportswear.
Jessica Long
In total, Long has won 23 Paralympic medals, 13 being gold medals as well. Long was born in Bratsk, Russia, and adopted at the age of 13 months. This unusual baby became an American Paralympic swimmer from Baltimore, Maryland, who held multiple world records and has won multiple gold medals over four Summer Paralympics. Because of fibular hemimelia, her lower legs were amputated when she was 18 months old. She learned to walk with prostheses. Long has been involved in many sports, including gymnastics, cheerleading, ice skating, biking, trampoline, and rock climbing.
Video: Unusual People Who Play Professional Sports
Josh Stevens
Josh Stevens isn’t your average high school baseball pitcher. In fact, the reason he’s one special person isn’t even because he only has one arm. Josh is one of the top pitchers at Vestavia Hills High School, a powerhouse program in Alabama. It just so happens that he’s a bit unique in another way. Being born with only one full arm, Josh Stevens learned how to play baseball at the age of 5. Pitching with his condition is nothing special to him; it’s all he’s ever known.
Sarah Reinersten
One of the most unusual people, a leg amputee who recently completed the Ironman World Championship triathlon in Hawaii, was honored with the “Most Inspirational Award” by the Challenged Athletes Foundation at their annual Celebration of Abilities Awards dinner. The former Paralympic track athlete also completed the Ironman in 2005, making sports history by becoming the first woman to finish the event with a prosthetic leg. Reinertsen, of California, competes in triathlons and road races around the world and is a member of the National Paratriathlon Team.
Mallory Weggemann
This unusual beauty is a Paralympic swimmer from the USA and one of the bizarre people who play professional sports. She became a T10-complete paraplegic after an epidural injection to treat post-shingles back pain in 2008. She broke many world records in the S7 classification and won multiple gold medals at the IPC Swimming World Championships in 2009 and 2010. Just under four months after becoming paralyzed, Mallory was back in the pool, with her eyes on Gold at the 2012 Paralympic Games, and achieved that goal.
Melissa Stockwell
40-year-old this unusual person who plays professional sports lost her leg in Iraq. In 2004, while serving in the Army, she was on a routine convoy through central Baghdad when her Humvee was struck by a roadside explosion, which resulted in the loss of her left leg above the knee. She subsequently became the first Iraq veteran chosen for the Paralympics. She competed in three swimming events, the 100 m butterfly, 100 m freestyle, and 400 m freestyle, at the 2008 Summer Paralympics and finished sixth, fifth, and fourth in her heats, respectively. She was the U.S. team’s flagbearer at the closing ceremonies.
Jim McLaren
MacLaren was born on 13 April 1963. He was a standout athlete in football and lacrosse at Yale University. Moreover, even before matriculating at Yale, he had been a leading athlete at Vermont Academy. In 1985, at the age of 22, MacLaren lost his left leg below the knee in a motorcycle accident and had to be defibrillated. He recovered and went on to run the marathon in 3 hours, 16 minutes, and to finish the Ironman Hawaii in 10 hours, 42 minutes.
Oscar Pistorius Osbourne
When he was born, he was missing the outside of both feet along with both fibula bones in his legs. Pistorius ran in both non-disabled sprint events and in sprint events for below-knee amputees. He was the tenth athlete to compete at both the Paralympic Games and Olympic Games. After becoming a Paralympic champion, Pistorius attempted to enter non-disabled international competitions over persistent objections by the International Association of Athletics Federations and charges that his artificial limbs gave an unfair advantage.
Bethany Hamilton
She is an American professional surfer who survived a 2003 shark attack in which her left arm was bitten off and who ultimately returned to professional surfing. People have wanted to know her story ever since. Her resilience and successful return to competitive surfing just a few months later have made her an idol to many. She has been on every chat show and in every teenage glossy magazine. She freely admits she appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show without knowing who Oprah Winfrey was.
Zion Clark
Zion Clark was born with a rare medical condition known as caudal regression syndrome, a condition that left him without legs. But the determined young man, popularly known for the term ‘No excuses tattooed across his back, not only managed to live without legs but also grew up to be a renowned wrestler. Another sport in which the wrestler has been standing out is wheelchair racing. Using special three-wheel equipment, operated only by the arms and upper body, Clark manages to reach incredible speeds in the tracks, around 32 kilometers per hour, and is also the most unusual person who plays professional sports.
Now we will present the most amazing top 10 unusual people who play professional sports. Before we begin, click that like button to inspire us. Also, subscribe to our channel and click the notification bell to be inspired by these types of ultimate facts.
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Ibrahim Amato
He is an Egyptian para-table tennis champion; at just 10 years of age, a horrifying train accident cost Ibrahim both his arms. The adjustment back to daily life wasn’t easy by any means, but the accident didn’t stop him from becoming an international sports star. Ibrahim’s journey highlights his motto in life that nothing is impossible. Just three years after the accident, Ibrahim started playing ping-pong. At first he tried holding the racquet under his arm, but it didn’t work out. After trying different options, Ibrahim found himself playing with his mouth, which maybe makes him sometimes a weird-looking person.
Jen Bricker
She is an American acrobat and aerialist. She is the sister of gymnast Dominique Moceanu. Born without legs, she was placed for adoption by her parents. She was a featured performer on Britney Spears’ Circus Tour and was the first handicapped high school tumbling champion in the state of Illinois. In 1998, Bricker competed in the AAU Junior Olympics, placing fourth. The same year she received the U.S. Tumbling Association’s Inspiration Award. Her story was retold by the BBC in January 2017.
Anothony Robles
Robles was born with only one leg for unknown reasons but refused to wear a prosthetic leg, removing it at the age of 3. Due to his leg missing all the way up to the hip, he has no stump to attach a prosthetic limb to. He endeavored to work around his missing leg, strengthening his body with various exercises. When Robles was in the sixth grade, he set a record for the most pushups by a member of his school.
Zheng Tao
He is a Chinese paraswimmer and two-time Paralympic champion. He is known as the “armless swimmer.” Zheng competed in his first Paralympic games at the 2012 London Paralympics, where he won the gold medal in a close race in the 100m backstroke S6 final. At the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, he suffered a lower back injury but still won the gold medal at the Men’s 100 meter backstroke S6 event with a world record of 1:10.84, two seconds faster than the previous record, which was established by himself in 2015. Indeed, the fast man!
Jim Abbott
He is a former Major League Baseball pitcher who achieved success at the major league level despite having been born without a right hand. He graduated from Flint Central High School and grew up in the East Village area of Flint, Michigan. While with the University of Michigan, Abbott won the James E. Sullivan Award as the nation’s best amateur athlete in 1987 and won a gold medal in the demonstration event at the 1988 Summer Olympics. He currently works as a motivational speaker.
Martina Caironi
As a result of a motorcycle accident in 2007, Caironi had to undergo high-femoral amputation on her left leg. Martina Caironi was born on July 13, 1989, and is an Italian Paralympic athlete. She competed at the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics and won a gold medal in the 100 m sprint in 2012 and a silver in the long jump in 2016. She also positioned 3rd in long jump in the year 2011 in the IWAS World Games, Sharjah.
Tom Dempsey
He was an American professional football player who was a placekicker in the National Football League for the New Orleans Saints, Philadelphia Eagles, Los Angeles Rams, Houston Oilers, and Buffalo Bills. Unlike the “soccer style” approach, which was becoming more and more widely used during his career, Dempsey’s kicking style was the then-standard straight-toe style. Dempsey is most widely known for kicking a 63-yard field goal as time expired to give the Saints a 19-17 win over the Detroit Lions on November 8, 1970, at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.
Kelly Cartwright
When she was fifteen, she had a form of cancer called synovial sarcoma. Part of her right leg needed to be amputated due to the cancer because chemotherapy was not an option. She has a prosthetic leg that she started using in high school. Her supporting body parts, which are regular walking legs, cost $62,000, which needed to be charged every night. Before losing her leg, she played netball. Kelly climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2009 and won a gold and a silver medal for events at the 2012 London Paralympics.
Steph Hammerman
When doctors diagnosed her with cerebral palsy, her parents were told that the common motor disability meant their daughter would never walk, talk, read, or write. This unusual kid turned out the tag “the Hammer.” Stephanie Hammerman, of North Carolina, is a cancer survivor and the world’s first CrossFit Level 2 trainer with cerebral palsy. Here, Hammerman writes in her own words about how she learned to flex and grow optimism, which she calls “a muscle that gets stronger with use. This can become the most embarrassing moment in sports for others who are demotivated!
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Jessica Rogers
Jessica was born with the rare condition of lumbosacral agenesis/caudal regression syndrome and has had bilateral leg amputations due to the condition. No one thought this unusual kid would turn out to become an American wheelchair basketball player, wheelchair racer, and swimmer of the world. Her spine ends at approximately T 7–10, which caused some paralysis. Jessica was born with one kidney and a very small lower anatomy, a common trait associated with caudal regression syndrome. But all these things were not able to stop her from becoming a professional athlete.
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