 "Photo: Photos courtesy of Justin Zook")
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SPORTS
For most people, winning gold medals in two consecutive Olympic games would be the accomplishment of a lifetime, but for Justin Zook, that achievement started with simply learning how to walk.
Though handicapped from birth, Zook has been a force to reckon with in the pool since he was 8, when he won his first of three state championships.
“When I was born, my right leg didn’t grow at all, so I had 30-plus surgeries,” said Zook, who started his swimming career at the age of 6. “It was either get in the pool or go to physical therapy every day. I could not get across the pool when I first started.”
Growing up in Minnesota, Zook’s life was a cycle of swimming, surgery and healing. Yet through that cycle, he still competed successfully against able-bodied swimmers before the Paralympics came into his life.
“Swimming was something to do, and — funny enough — my grades in school were always better when I was swimming,” said Zook. “But because of surgeries, I’d swim for about a year, then I’d be out of the water for a while, so I’d keep going through the same cycle.
“Paralympics didn’t really come into my life until I was 11, and even then, it was just kind of there. I wasn’t really paying attention to it. [In] able-bodied swimming I was still All-American in high school, so I didn’t really need [Paralympic swimming].”
Zook started swimming in Paralympic events after a coach from Canada saw him swim as a child and told his parents about the Paralympic program.
At the age of 12, Zook competed in his first major Paralympic event, the Paralympic World Championships in New Zealand. Although he was 5 years younger than the rest of the competition, he still walked away in the top eight of some of his events. This success paved the way for Zook to begin his Paralympic swimming career.
“We would have to argue with him to get out of the pool,” said Zook’s mother, Jeanine. “His leg would be spasming and he would be shaking with pain, but he would still want to get back in the pool.”
His dedication paid off, as Zook has been to three Olympic games on the Paralympic team. In the first one, he was an alternate in Sydney before getting food poisoning and not making the qualifying round.
“Honestly, it was one of those experiences where it almost made me try a little bit harder,” said Zook.
Trying harder paid off, as Zook went on to win the gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke in both Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008 for the Paralympic team.
Because he swam during his undergraduate years at Springfield College in Massachusetts, Zook lost his college swimming eligibility, since a student athlete is only allowed to participate in college sports for four years. Zook now trains at the Fort Lauderdale Aquatics Center under coach Marty Hendricks.
“I think of Justin as a swimmer, and I look at him and compare him to others as a swimmer,” said Hendricks. “You completely forget the disability, especially when you see him in the pool with very fast swimmers. All of a sudden he is just a swimmer.
“When he does have set backs, he just makes me aware of them, and I’m thinking I need to treat him differently, and then you realize he doesn’t need to be treated differently at all. That was the challenge, how do you train somebody that is a gold medalist, world record holder in the Paralympics? And the answer to the question is actually quite simple: like any other elite swimmer, because that’s what he is.”
Besides being impressed with Zook’s swimming ability, Hendrick is equally impressed with his swimmer’s lack of complaining.
“The boy never complains. What he’s able to do in the water is amazing, and yet he never complains. Ever,” said Hendricks. “Although he’s technically disabled, he never plays that card, he never complains.”
“My parents kind of had the attitude that the more I complained, the worse it was going to be, so I learned to not complain,” said Zook. “The funny thing is, I’ll complain about the little things and not the things I really should. Like, I’m missing half my right foot, and I’ll make jokes about something like that, then complain about something stupid, like, ‘Oh, my arm hurts,’ or something.”
Not complaining about surgeries becomes more impressive with the fact that after each surgery, not only does Zook have to readjust his swim style, like his kicking and flip turns in the pool, but also has to relearn how to walk with a longer leg as his doctors work to make both his legs the same length.
Zook had his leg lengthened another 2 inches last January with a surgery that consists of doctors breaking his leg, stretching it out with a halo device, and then letting the bone fill in the gap like a normal break would heal.
To lengthen his leg again this winter, that process will be repeated.
“Currently I have a titanium rod and four pins in the lower half of my right leg, so that’s going to have to come out,” said Zook of the process that needs to be taken before the lengthening procedure can occur. “I’m going back home [to Minnesota] to have the surgery because my doctor back home has done every single surgery I’ve had done.”
When he was younger, the doctors actually gave Zook the option to either amputate his leg, or go through the complicated surgery process that would get him to where he is today. The doctors also originally thought that he would need “several surgeries” to fix the leg, but nowhere near the 30-plus that he’s had.
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