Lex Gillette Video Interview, U.S. Paralympic Long Jumper

I think it would be safe to say that my jumping journey started at my house back in Raleigh, N.C. When I was a kid I used to jump off of the couch. I was kind of a dorky little kid. I had Superman pajamas. I used to tie bed sheets around my neck and jump around in the living room and "save the world." Seven years old I actually came home from school, I was outside jumping around, playing, and later on that night I started losing my vision. I didn’t bump my head, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t have an accident or anything like that. I told my mom and she had taken me to the doctor the next morning and they said that I had retina detachments in my eyes so they had to have an emergency operation to fix that. And my vision was stabilized for about two or three weeks and then the same problem happened again and I had to have another operation. They fixed it, didn’t work, had to have another operation, another operation, another operation, and after the tenth operation they couldn’t do anything else to help my sight. So, I was kind of forced to live my life without being able to see. And over the next year, I think I was about nine years old, I just steadily lost vision each and every day to the point where I could only see lights and shadows. And so that was pretty tough, but it got to the point where my mom and my family, they sat me down and told me that I still could achieve anything that I wanted to, I just may have to do it in a different fashion. And along that time I started getting my confidence back and went through middle school. And once I got into high school one of my teachers had introduced me to long jump, and basically what long jump is, is you run and hit the board and jump into the sand, so since I couldn’t see what was going on he stood at the board and he would give me audible sounds, he would clap and yell ‘Straight!’ and let me know which direction that I needed to run. And so all of those times of me jumping inside of my house and jumping off of the couch and jumping off of the coffee table, I was able to take that and put it towards something that wouldn’t get me in trouble with my mom anymore. And it just got to the point where I steadily practiced at it and next thing I knew, the year I graduated from high school I found myself at my first Paralympic Games in Athens and won my first silver medal.

One thing that I love about long jump is that I’m able to feel free and open and I don’t have any restraints; I don’t have anybody telling me that I can’t do anything. And so to be able to initiate the run and then the jump just gives me a sense of fulfillment, a sense of worth, and it’s something that I’ve been practicing for a while and so it means a lot to me. And it’s honestly something that Lex Gillette can say, ‘I’ve done this.'