Angela Madsen

Angela Madsen

Madsen at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London
Personal information
Nationality	American
Born	(1960-05-10) May 10, 1960 (age 57)
Residence	Long Beach, California
Height	1.85 m (6 ft 1 in)
Sport
Country	United States
Sport	Athletics
Disability	Limb deficiency
Disability class	TA (rowing) F56 (athletics)
Event(s)	shot put, javelin throw
Medal record Representing United States Track and field Paralympic Games 2012 London Shot put – F54-56 Parapan American Games 2011 Guadalajara Shot put – F54/55/56 Rowing World Rowing Championships 2003 Milan Double sculls – TA 2004 Banyoles Double sculls – TA 2005 Kaizu Double sculls – TA 2002 Sevile Single sculls – TA

Angela Madsen (born May 10, 1960) is an American Paralympian sportswoman, in both rowing and track and field. In a long career, Madsen has moved from race rowing, to ocean challenges before switching in 2011 to athletics, winning a bronze medal in the shot put at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London. Madsen, along with team-mate Helen Taylor, is the first woman to have rowed across the Indian Ocean.

Madsen was born in the United States in 1960. Educated at Fairborn Baker High School in Fairborn, Ohio, she became a single parent at the age of seventeen, which severely impeded her chance for an athletics scholarship.

Most of Madsen's immediate family were military, so when her brothers told her she "couldn't make it as a marine", it made her determined to join. She enlisted in the Marines, leaving her daughter with her parents until she completed basic training. After passing training, the Marine Corps provided Madsen with a home for her and her daughter. She was sent to Fort McClellan in Alabama to train as a military police officer and her first duty station was at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, near Irvine, California. At El Toro, she joined the women's basketball team, at center, and when the team competed at the Marine Corps West Coast Regional Basketball Tournament, Madsen was scouted by the women's Marine Corps team.

In 1980, at her first Marine Corps training session, she fell on the court and another player stepped on her back, rupturing two discs in her spine. This in turn led Madsen to undergo surgery to her back, but a string of errors resulted in her suffering a L1 incomplete spinal cord injury and paraplegia.

The US Military refused to pay for Madsen's medical bills following the accident and in the dispute that followed Madsen lost her home and her marriage fell apart. She fell into depression and ended up homeless, living out of a storage locker in Disneyland.

Madsen's life turned around when, after attending a National Veterans Games, she was introduced to wheelchair basketball. She took up the sport and slowly began to rebuild her life. But the defining point in her recovery came after she fell onto subway tracks in San Francisco, and feared that she had broken her neck. This event made her reassess her life as a disabled person, and she decided to live her life to the full. She wrote an autobiography, published in 2014, titled Rowing Against the Wind.