Trischa Zorn

Trischa Zorn was born blind and grew up in Indiana, where her parents insisted she be treated like any other child, including in sport. She took up swimming young and, remarkably, competed on her high school and college teams against sighted swimmers, following lane lines by feel and instinct in a sport that depends heavily on sight for pacing and turns.

She made her Paralympic debut at the 1980 Arnhem Games at 16 and won gold from her very first race. What followed was one of the longest and most dominant careers in the history of organised sport. She competed at seven consecutive Paralympic Games between 1980 and 2004, missing only the boycotted 1980 Moscow Olympics equivalent by virtue of the Games being held elsewhere, and won medals at every one of them.

By the time she retired she had won 55 Paralympic medals, 41 of them gold, more than any other athlete, male or female, disabled or able-bodied, has won at any Olympic-level Games in history. The scale of the achievement is difficult to compare to anything else in sport, spanning teenage years through to her forties.

After retiring from competition she worked as a lawyer and remained involved in disability sport administration, and in 2012 became the first Paralympian inducted into the International Paralympic Committee's Hall of Fame, a fitting recognition for a record that shows no sign of being challenged.