4MyChild: Help and Hope for Life

May 12, 2007

Swimming as Cure for Cerebral Palsy?

This article from swimnews.com tells of the story of Susie Maroney, a world champion swimmer, who was born with cerebral palsy.

Maroney Beat Cerebral Palsy Through Swimming

May 11, 2007 Craig Lord

Susie Maroney, the Australian open water medallist who holds the fastest time ever for a double crossing of the English Channel, today revealed that she and her twin brother were born with cerebral palsy but fought the condition and won using swimming as their biggest medical weapon.

Now 32, Maroney told Australian reporters that she had kept the condition a secret in her youth for fear of being ridiculed.

“You’d be winning at a school swimming carnival but you’d still get picked on. So I’ve never talked about it,” says the swimmer in a widely reported magazine article.

Maroney and her twin brother Sean were taken to learn to swim by their parents when they were just six months old, specifically to help to combat the condition. Sean died when he accidentally fell from a 26th floor balcony while training for a triathlon in Hawaii in June 2002, that tragedy effectively ending Maroney’s career as a world-class long-distance swimmer.

Visit http://www.swimnews.com/News/displayStory.jhtml?id=5281 to read the entire article. Find out how swimming can help with cerebral palsy.