Melissa Stockwell
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Stockwell lights the cauldron at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs April 30 to officially kick off the 2012 Warrior Games.
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| Born | April 23, 1980 Grand Haven, Michigan, U.S. |
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| Height | 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m)[1] | ||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 130 lb (59 kg)[1] | ||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Melissa Stockwell (born April 23, 1980) is an American paratriathlete and former Paralympic swimmer and U.S. Army officer.
Military career
A first lieutenant, she was the first female soldier to lose a limb in the Iraq War. She lost her left leg when a roadside bomb exploded when she was leading a convoy in Baghdad.[2] For her service in Iraq she was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.[3] Following her retirement from the military she works as a prosthetist[4] and served on the board of directors of the Wounded Warrior Project from 2005-2014.[4]
Sport
She subsequently became the first Iraq veteran chosen for the Paralympics.[5] 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.[6] She was the U.S. team's flag bearer at the closing ceremonies.[3]
Turning to triathlon after the Beijing Paralympics, Stockwell was selected to represent the USA in the 2010 ITU Paratriathlon World Championships in Budapest. She won the Women's TRI-2 (above knee amputee) class, then successfully defended her TRI-2 World Champion title in 2011 and 2012.[7] She is a multiple US National Paratriathlon Champion in her classification,[8][9] and was named USAT Paratriathlete of the Year in 2010[10] and 2011.[11] As of January 2013[update] Stockwell is at the top of the ITU's rankings in the women's TRI-2 class.[12]
Stockwell is a Level 1 USAT Triathlon coach and co-founder of Dare2Tri, a Chicago-based triathlon club specifically for athletes with disability.[4][13]
Filmography
- Warrior Champions: From Baghdad to Beijing, a documentary film by directors Brent Renaud and Craig Renaud.[14][15]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Melissa Stockwell. |
References
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- ↑ Results for Melissa stockwell from the International Paralympic Committee
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- ↑ Warrior Champions, Austin Film Festival
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External links
- Use mdy dates from February 2015
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles which use infobox templates with no data rows
- Articles containing potentially dated statements from January 2013
- Commons category link is defined as the pagename
- 1980 births
- Living people
- American amputees
- American military personnel of the Iraq War
- American sportswomen
- Female triathletes
- Paralympic swimmers of the United States
- Paratriathletes of the United States
- Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal
- Recipients of the Purple Heart medal
- Swimmers at the 2008 Summer Paralympics
- United States Army officers
- Women in the Iraq War
- Women in the United States Army
