It doesn’t matter how many times I walk onto a set or stand on a stage, I still feel the rush of excitement and wonder I did as a kid.”
Bitten by another bug
When Katy went to California in 2004 to pursue her acting career, she also found another calling - running. Her new prosthetist in L.A. - Will Yule of Hanger Clinic - talked to her about taking up running to get in shape. Her decision to give it a try, even though she was 25 years old and had never run before, would change her life. “It wasn’t until the world changed and technology caught up with my spirit that I was even able to think about being an athlete,” Katy says. Hanger provided her with a new set of running leg that helped her dra-
“All I ever wanted was to be an ordinary kid, just like everyone else, and it wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I realized that those things that make me different are the things that make me extraordinary. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and there is a specific reason that I was born the way that I was - without my lower legs - and that reason is because that is how I am set apart from the rest of the pack.”
matically, she says. With those legs, she started running for the first time in March 2006, and, although it was difficult at first, she came to love it. Although she first started running for fitness, one day, on a whim, she decided to run in a 60-meter race. When she got to the track and nervously lined up between her competitors, she found out that she was running against 10-year-old kids. “It was an incredibly humbling moment,” she says, “and I realized two things: one, that I was truly starting from square one with this thing, and two, that I better win. The gun went off, and in those next seconds, I did what no adult should do: I raced children and beat them. I don’t know if that makes me an awesome athlete or a horrible person. Little did I know that at that very meet, there was a Paralympic coach
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Amp it up! magazine MAY/JUNE/JULY 2012
that was paying very close attention to what I was doing, and it was shortly after that that he was encouraging me to take track more seriously.” That’s when she began training for the US Parapan American team. With support from prosthetics manufacturer Ossur and from Hanger Clinic, she got the special running legs that she needed for such high-level competition. “Part of my running journey has been about just showing up,” she says. “I race women who have one leg and one prosthetic leg as I am the first bilateral above-knee racer to enter the sport. I meet their times and keep up with their standards. I am the first person in the world to do what I do.” Running track has taken her all over the globe competing as a member of the US Paralympic team. In 2007, she broke the world record for the 200-meter race at the Paralympic National Championships. “I look forward to representing the US again in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London,” she says.
From ordinary to EXTRAordinary
As a motivational speaker, Katy enjoys speaking to kids about their future. “I tell them about my life growing up as an amputee and how it made me feel different,“ she says. “All I ever wanted was to be an ordinary kid, just like everyone else, and it wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I realized that those things that make me different are the things that make me extraordinary. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and there is a specific reason that I was born the way that I was - without my lower legs - and that reason is because that is how I am set apart from the rest of the pack.” Katy also spreads her eternal optimism through her blog, which is aptly titled “Observations of an Eternal Optimist.” Those two words, she says, sum up her personality. Still, ike all people, Katy has her difficulties in life and says that she has a good cry every now and then. “There are things in my life that I am continuing to work on, but I can’t remember the last time I cried because of something caused by my physical difference,” she says. Indeed, Katy Sullivan did not get the memo about giving up and sitting on the couch because she has a physical disability. If she had, however, it’s likely that she would have simply crumbled it up, thrown it in the garbage, and gone on achieving the extraordinary. For more information about Katy Sullivan, visit www.KatySullivan.net.